Chapter 13

Unlike any other people of An Lar, the Jinn and Peri of the lands around the Gray Lands have a different explanation of how they as people came into existence. After the world was made, and all the other races came into being, the Lifegiver called one of her servants to her, a beautiful being who’s hair was a burning flame and her body floated on the air like a cloud of whitest smoke.

“Oh Daughter of mine, Child of Smoke and Fire, I have a great treasure to give you. Used wisely, it will save the world; used wrongly and it will destroy all.”

“Oh Mother of all, how am I to deal with this treasure?”

“Give it a home where none can see it. Wrap it in magic so none may sense it. Create a cloud of beings to keep watch over it.”

The Lady of Smoke and Fire searched all of An Lar, and finally came to the great desert called by some the Gray Lands, looking for the perfect place. Here, where there was a hollow surrounded by mountains, a land unloved by Daoine and Darion, Dwarf or Dragonkin, she found her home. Using the might of the magic the Lifegiver gave her, she created a special place in the middle of the lands, and wrapped it in her magic, so none might sense the treasure. A five pointed star she drew around it. At the very center of the star, she lit a great fire. The fire burned for nine days and nine nights. On the ninth night, great sparks flew up into the skies. These she took and turned into the Peris, with a beauty most others never came close to. Large flames danced among the smoke of bonfire. From these the Jinn were born.

Giving them their instructions, she turned into a fiery wraith of smoke, wrapped herself around the treasure, and plunged it into the bonfire, at the center of the star, there to hold the treasure close until the Lifegiver calls for her to give it back.

And to this day, none of her children will tell where the Mother of Smoke and Fire rests, but they all go from time to time to make pilgrimage to honor her and tell of how they fulfilled her request.

Tales of Beginning – Maire Windwood of the Alder Branches

Ever since they had reached Xendo’s freehold, one thing or the other had gone wrong for Xhindi.

First, of course, was finding Piter and Rashan dead. Piter’s death was particularly nasty, but Rashan hadn’t been much better, but at least his body, down at the mine mouth, had been burned and was nothing like the bloody mess he had found in their cabin. Sending Hazin off almost as soon as they found Rashan had seemed the sensible thing to do, with a deep binding on him not to mention Violetta Greenleaf, but now, as they trekked through the wilds of the Gray Lands, part of him wished he had thought of another plan.

But that wasn’t the end of the bad luck. Next, because of all the damage to the mining site from the first attack, followed by what scavenging Piter and his friends could do, it took them three days to uncover the site that had the hidden box Violetta had come for. The marker she was supposed to find was hidden under a huge pile of rubble and debris from the explosions that took place when the mine was attacked, loosening a tailing pile right on top of it, and it took time to dig it clear enough to reach.

When Violetta released the ward on the vault, it sent up a column of magic energy that could be sensed for miles, and soon as she pulled the box out of the vault, three spy ravens began to circle around the sky above them. He guessed whoever came after Piter had left them behind, waiting for a signal like the vault. Grabbing Violetta and her precious package, they jumped on their griffins and made a mad dash deeper into the desert. Ashira was sure she took out two of the birds with her bow, but not so sure about the third one. Finding a rock shelter that would hide them from aerial view, he cast a ward to hide their presence, while keeping a lookout for their unwelcome follower, and somehow, he convinced his woman patron not to open the box until they got to the safety of Aufzee’s Freehold. At least she agreed to that.

They headed out following a roundabout way through some rough and broken countryside, full of black rock canyons and mounds of broken red stone. It was well away from the main trade road that would take them to their destination, but far enough back they didn’t have to worry nearly as much about whoever set up Piter and left the spy ravens. Only the people experienced with the local landscape could pick this way out over the unforgiving landscape. With their troupe making relatively good time, Xhindi was about to decide they would make it before running out of supplies when the last bit of bad luck hit.

It didn’t feel like a night of bad omen. Ashira had managed to catch an antelope while on patrol, and as Ruath and he prepared to roast their dinner meat Violetta, sitting near the campfire, had pulled off her boots to pour out a piece of gravel she had picked up. Ruath tossed some wood on the fire not far from where she sat.

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Suddenly, she gave a sharp cry, brief but loud. “What was that?”

Ruath seeing a movement, hammered a piece of wood he was holding down on the source of movement. “Damn it.”

Xhindi looked up from where he was working, skewering meat onto sticks to cook for their meal.

“Did it bite you?” Ruath asked.

“It felt...hot. And sharp.” Violetta pulled up her pants leg. Not far above her ankle was a small wound. Two small punctures. It was already swelling. “What...what was it? It feels like fire.”

Xhindi bounded over and looked at the remnants of what Ruath had smashed. “Is that…”

“Looks like it,” Ruath replied, wiping the stick off and throwing it into the fire. Must have been hiding in the firewood.”

Xhindi took a potion out of his belt patch, and handed it to Violetta. “Drink this. You’ve been bitten by a blood fire spider, and you are going to be very sick for a while. This will help.”

“Blood fire?” she asked. A look of worry, not yet fear crossed over her face.

“You’ll know why it’s called that too soon. I am sorry.”

Quickly, he slit her pants leg and made a tourniquet to slow down the flow of venom.

After the potion he gave her took effect and put her to sleep, he walked into the night. The people gathered around the ailing woman were not shocked at all by the sounds of destruction and yelling they heard. He came back at dawn, and headed them all out.

And now he was here, after traveling a day and a night to a place he had never expecting to bring Violetta. He held her before him in his saddle as they rode, her semi-conscious from the venom and the potions he had been feeding her to keep her from shrieking from the pain. They did very little to slow the progress of the toxin.

“Will the bad luck continue?” he muttered.

Ashira gave him a look. “Is it bad luck, or is it that the plans you made are not in line with the plan of the Lifegiver, and she has something else in mind?”

“Away with you, woman. Just hope my sister will bend the rules enough to let us in.”

Xhindi found the entrance to the place he was searching for. It was reached by a narrow cleft in the rock, wide enough for an ox wagon, but not two side by side.

“The sacred precinct of Almyra, the fifth ray of the holy star,” Ruath murmured as they passed through. “May the Lifegiver and the Mother of Smoke and Fire bless our passage here, and the Called welcome us into the secrets hidden here.”

It was a ritual recital. “So let it be,” Ashira responded.

Almost as if in answer, they heard the dripping of water. As they rode down the path, and the cleft widened into a narrow canyon, they passed a cache of water, precious in this desert land, gathered in the shadows where the sun could not shine directly.

“Imagine if the Freeholders saw this water,” Ashira said. “How quickly would they drain it out for their mines and their stupid wetland ways?”

“Just another reason to keep the outsiders away,” Ruath replied. “And if they saw it, they’d try to mine the holy mountain. And then where would we be?”

“Guarding the mountain is our most sacred duty,” Ashira said. She looked hard at Xhindi, who chose to ignore it.

“I did not expect to come here on this journey,” he said. “It was not in the plan.”

Ashira spit. “You and your plan.”

“It was the Called and the Elders who planned it, too,” Xhindi said.

Violetta Greenleaf, drifting in and out of consciousness, groaned as she shifted her leg where it was resting on the griffin’s side. “Hang on a little bit more, woman,” he whispered into her ear. “We’re almost where we can get you some healing.”

Ruath pulled up beside him. “I’ll go ahead to let the Called know we’re coming,” he said, and hurried past the oasis and into the shadows beyond.

“Oh, I suspect she already knows,” Xhindi said, watching Ruath hurry down the road. “It’s not just our foes who have spies in the landscape.”

“Are you really sure of this?” Ashira said. She pulled her veil down, revealing her almost angelic face, and flicked her wings nervously. “I know they had a plan for her, but bringing her here – will that not upset what her role was to be?”

“At this point, if we do not get her help, she will have no role at all. Daoine don’t usually survive the bite of the blood fire spider without help. And who best to help her near at hand? She’d be dead before we could get to Aufzee’s Freehold. What else could we do? And still there’s no guarantee she’ll make it.”

Beyond the depths of the pool of water, the road only went a little further. The canyon dead-ended into a sheer wall of rock, and beyond that, the sacred mountain rose, higher than one could view from Xhindi’s position. Carved into the rockface itself, glistening in the light in black streaked with red, was an ornate doorway, decorated with engravings of tongues of flame reaching up to cloud. The doors themselves were of heavy wood bound with iron and brass. The dirt road they had been followed gave way to a path paved with fine flagstone. Unlike most places they had seen since leaving the town of Runi Blaln, there was a green space, an intentional garden with herbs and other plants growing lining the sides of the flagstones, and insects drifted among them. Nearer the gate, one on either side of it was an unusual feature for this landscape, two large trees proving shade and some protection for growing things. Ruath’s griffin sat under the shade of the tree to the right.

Xhindi and Ashira drew up to the tree to the left. As Ashira helped support Violetta, the jinn man dismounted and lifted the wounded woman into his arms.

Violetta opened her eyes. “Where?”

“Somewhere safe,” Xhindi replied. “Close your eyes again. It’ll be better.”

As he walked down the flagstones, the great door in the wall opened, and a woman wrapped in blue gauze fabric, veiling even her face, stepped out, followed by Ruath and three others.

“Brother, you do not break the discipline lightly,” the woman in blue said.

He gave her a curt nod. “You know me, Sister.”

“So…” the woman said.

“You sent me on this mission,” he replied. He looked down at the woman he was cradling, how the effects of the poisoning was marking her face, affecting her breathing. “But thanks to a Blood fire spider, the mission is on the edge of failing. I had nowhere else to turn.”

The woman unveiled her face, gave him a gentle look and a tiny smile. “The Lifegiver will decide if you chose rightly. Bring her inside.”