CHAPTER 62

“Go on,” says the highwayman. “Empty your pockets, lad.”

“I don’t have anything on me.”

I manage not to tremble as I say it. The situation is far from ideal.I don’t even have a knife to defend myself with. What’s worse, the rage and the adrenaline have left me aggressively sober.

The man scratches his neck again and takes a step forward. In the gloom, his shadow towers over me, his eyes alive and calm.

“Now lad, we heard you talking to yourself. You want me to believe you’re going to Olvion with the clothes on your back and a horse you stole from… where?”

“Good horse.” Another robber whistles through broken teeth. “Maybe make him tell you where he found it.”

“Aye, there’s a good idea,” says the leader. “Where did this prize come from, lad?”

I’ve been cursed for gambling in the past, but in reality there’s only one card I can play.

“The horse is my master’s,” I say, straightening. “The Godtouched Lysander, in Hollor’s Fall.”

A peculiar silence follows my words. Every bandit’s face twists a little at that, but not, as I hoped, out of fear. Anger is the emotion. The horse-holder spits to the ground while his leader looks up and around, taking in the sights with a faraway look in his eye.

“You’re his servant, then? Carrying a message to Olvion, are you?”

“I’m… something like that.”

“Full of shit, is what he is,” says a third robber, a kid little older than me. “Godtouched don’t send messages by horse, and not by a one-handed rider. They have magic.”

“That elf,” the leader says slowly, as if there had been no interruption. “Killed my brother some time past.”

I freeze. Bad move. Is it Cora’s bad luck already?

“So what should I do with you? I could nail you to a tree, leave a little message of my own for the elf to find.”

There are bushes to one side of the road, and on the other a little wall separating the path from a farmer’s field.

“I could make you take us to his house, couldn’t I? I bet you know the secret path through the magic woods.”

I cast Hunch.

“Or you could lead him to us,” he says slowly, turning the idea over in his head. “Say you found something he must see, something…”

While he debates with himself, I realize no better chance is on its way. I lean down, ignoring the pain in my legs, and throw the bottle at the man’s face. He puts a hand up reflexively, and that’s when I jump into the bushes, crashing into the vegetation with both feet followed by a chorus of curses and weapons being drawn.

On the other side, I find less support than I’d prefer. The rock I touch is granite, porous but rounded to the point of steepness, and at the speed at which I fall onto it, it’s already too late when I touch the other side. I slip, tumble, my skin drags painfully on the rock as my only hand darts in every direction until it finds, by a miracle, a jutting root. I hang there, panting, heart doing its best to jump out through my mouth, scrambling to find purchase on the rock face.

Steps above, careful dragging on granite.

“Not a hard fall,” says the bandit leader.

Looking up, I find I can’t see him. The rock face is too sheer, the sky above too dark. Looking down, I find he’s right. The fall wouldn’t have killed me. Right now, I hang only a short distance from the ground.

“Go round,” his voice comes again. “I want the little bastard.”

I hear muttered agreement from his entourage, but no movement from himself. He stays there, on top of the boulder, looking down and searching.

Fuck.

I don’t let myself drop, afraid that it will put me in sight of the big man above. Instead, I gingerly find my footing on the rough granite and then a place where I can stand straight. It’s minuscule, much less than a shelf, but enough to step a little to the side, find another hold, and from there jump to the ground under cover of night, away from the man’s sight.

Ow.

I land on a clump of prickly bushes that stab painfully into a thousand places in my skin. More bad luck. I bear the agony in silence, but it doesn’t matter.

“I heard you,” says the bandit leader. “To my left, Kess. Search well and you’ll find him.”

His orders give me time enough to slip from the bushes and into the treeline of a little wood. There’s no chance he can see me now, but before I can walk too far, a twig snaps just ahead. I crouch down and observe, spying one of his men, and then another, and a third. They are arranged in a cordon, mere shadows in the dark, walking slowly towards me.

Trapped.

Sneaky allows me enough sureness of foot that they don’t catch my movements, but any chance of hiding is marred by the fact that there is no place to hide. The cordon has me trapped against the rock wall. With their slow advance, the robbers will find me in no time, darkness or no darkness.

Think!

I find a nook behind a tree where I can sit and relieve my battered legs. My thighs are still hurt from the horse ride, still stiff and slow to react. I look over my shoulder. Slowly but surely, checking every shadow and crevice, the group approaches, carrying long knives. Above, the big man paces to and fro; I can hear his feet scraping cautiously against the granite.

Think, godsdamn you!

I have no weapons, and their blades shine sharp enough in the dying light. Five against one, and I’m sure more await above.

A smirk creeps up my face as I sink my face between my knees. Bad luck. Great. Awesome. Made it through a dungeon only to end up dead as a warning to Lysander.

Not his fault you decided to run off drunk into the night, says my backstabbing dungeon mind. What was the plan, again? Ride boldly into Olvion, fight Kord, save Katha?

I can hear the distasteful sarcasm inside my own head. Other bits and pieces of conversation make their way to me, dislodged by the stress of my impending death.

Leave them.

Choose.

Your fault.

War is coming.

Light a fire.

Oh.

Heart pounding with renewed hope, I bring up the misty pages. My pending choices are still there, painted orange and impossible to ignore.

Disciple of Fire

Disciple of Illusion

Infiltrator

Torturer

I’d read the descriptions before, paying careful attention to the rather vague way they described the Perks. Torturer for the ability to cause pain and force my victims to speak truths. The Disciple Perks for three spells from either the Fire or Illusion Traditions. Infiltrator for extra sneak.

The men approach in the world beyond my misty pages. They scour the forest, swishing their knives into bushes, looking up at the shadows above, checking even tree boughs, focused and intent.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

War is coming.

Light a fire.

Stand your ground.

Disciple of Fire becomes highlighted. There’s a moment of hesitation, where I hang on the brink of decision, apprehensive about what this Perk can do to my personality. Then a blade sings in the dark, close to me, and I relent.

Select 2 spells from the Basic Spells list, and 1 spell from the Intermediate Spells list.

FIRE

BASIC

Create and Extinguish Fire

Flare

Incendiary Dart

INTERMEDIATE

Mantle of Flames

Nova

I make the selection as slowly as I dare. The men are almost upon me, the knives singing, twings snapping, the crackle of dead leaves. Hunch activates, a spike of ice in my brain, right before the man’s voice rings out.

“He’s here!”

Mantle of Flames activates as I stand. The fire seems to pour out from my heart in a raging torrent, enveloping my neck and my arms, and stretching a short distance beyond me.

It’s only warm, I think, marveling at the feeling. The next moment a nearby bush catches, going up in a blaze.

The nearest bandit, the one who spotted me, steps back with a yelp, but before he can go far I dart forward and grab his wrist. His screams of pain mix with the smell of sizzling meat. Other men close in, shouting, but by then I’ve let their companion go and snapped up the knife he dropped. I level it towards the next man who comes running.

“Come on!” I shout.

The fire wraps around my arms and my chest. It constricts my chest, reaches into me and finds something there, waiting. I’m an inferno. A raging monster, the drake in the dungeon. If I stand still, I die.

My knife finds the man’s gut faster than he can parry it, and the flames enveloping me jump onto him, twisting, bellowing, claiming for more.

More come.

They jump from the dancing shadows cast by the growing blaze, from the darkness, three at the same time with knives slashing the air wildly, without discipline, trying to hit me without getting close to my flaming armor. I parry one strike, another, and a kick makes me drop my weapon. I fall to the ground, setting the underbrush on fire and aiming my empty hand at the man with the same movement.

The Incendiary Dart spell feels like an extension of the boundless energy inside me, a tug on the fountain spewing from my heart. It rips through the air and bursts on the robber’s shirt, lighting it on fire and driving him off screaming. Another bandit falls on me in a wail of kicks and desperate punches, nothing like the coordinated attacks Amelia had me face. Dirty Fighter kicks in before he can do any damage, and a straight punch to the throat sends the man back hawking and choking, struggling for a lungful of smoke. In the confusion, I lose the remaining robber from sight.

If he’s smart, he ran. And yet I hope he didn’t. I hope he’s standing around, waiting to get the drop on me. I find myself picking the knife I dropped almost eagerly before the scene in front of me comes into sharper relief.

I stand amidst the blaze. The little wood has become tinder. Entire trees have caught fire, burning like torchheads in the night and illuminating the sheer rock wall I descended from. The awareness of what I did comes slowly, creepingly, and then all at once. I feel again the plunge of the knife as I sunk it into the man’s gut, and react only at my lack of reaction. Cutting, burning, it had come naturally. The wood afire around me, it seems… proper. An extension of my actions.

The flames lick around me, prickling my skin. I have a moment to wonder at the sensation of pain before the magical inferno enveloping me, the Mantle of Flames, peters, and winks out, sucked back into my heart.

The heat assails me all at once and instinct takes over. I run in a straight line to the rock wall, hot to the touch, and follow it low to the ground, quick feet in the smoking undergrowth.

At one point, I trip and almost fall before catching myself on the rock face. The object I tripped on whimpers, and I see it’s one of the robbers, the kid who sneered at me up on the road. I look down at him, choking and spitting, crying and drawing in large amounts of poisonous air. Defeated. It feels right to leave him behind to be consumed by the conquering flame. I marvel slightly at my own actions, picking him up under an arm and dragging him bodily, straining through thorns and flaming boughs, until finally the woods end and the road begins.

I throw the robber to the bare ground and see his tunic is on fire. I extend my hand, and Extinguish the flames, snuffing them out as if I’d barred them from air. The boy moans in pain. I leave him.

Other shouts have risen in the vicinity. People are beginning to appear, quickly dressed and crying in alarm.

‘Fire!’ The word spreads through the night air, rousing sleeping farmers and putting them to work. Already buckets of water are coming, chains being formed.

I do what I can. Standing in front of the blaze I begin to unmake my creation, snuffing flames within my sight. Extinguish isn’t powerful, but it can be used in quick succession to at least cease the fire’s advancement, giving the firefighters space to move.

Without words, we work for hours. At points, I look up the granite wall, to the point where the bandit leader stood and watched the forest. He’s not there anymore.

*

“That’s good work you did.”

The farmer, a homesteader who organized the firefighting efforts, has just given me a waterskin that I all but emptied. I do not know what time it is. There’s no light on either horizon.

I shake my head.

“I regret causing the fire. I was forced to defend myself.”

Do I regret it? The cold air on my overheated skin feels soothing, but I remember the moment the flames poured out from my heart and enveloped me, began eating at the world. I felt alive.

“No, sir. I meant with the highwaymen. They’ve been preying on honest people here for months now, and the Black Sword has done nothing.” The man hesitates, his bushy mustache twitching like a worried mouse. “Pardon, sir. I didn’t mean to disparage the guild.”

He thinks I’m Godtouched, I realize with some surprise.

“Disparage away,” I hear myself say. “Fuck them all.”

I stand, ignoring the man’s gawping. The small wood in front of us is a smoking ruin. In its deepest recesses farmers are still stomping out fires. I walk down the road to where a group of people are clustered. They turn as I approach. It feels slightly uncanny watching hard, strong men and women, the sort of people who made decisions in Reach, bow and scrape as I approach. Sitting in the middle of the group, hands tied behind his back, is the kid I saved from the fire. Next to him three corpses lay, the ones that could be recovered from the inferno, blackened and disfigured.

“Did anyone see their leader?” I ask the group. “Tall man. He and another have my mount.”

“He’s known around these parts, sir,” says the bushy-mustached man, scurrying after me. “But he wasn’t seen tonight, no. Perhaps he fled. These highwaymen are all cowards, as you know. Hum. Incidentally, what should we do with the, hum, this one?”

I look down at the bound criminal. He stares up at me, all trace of weakness burned away from him.

“What’s the penalty for banditry?” I ask the assembled.

The boy pales. The rest look at me like mice receiving counsel from a cat.

“Hum. Hanging till death, sir.”

“Then do that. I’m going to find my horse.”

“No! Wait!” the boy yells. “I can lead you to them!”

I stop.

“Is it close?”

He eyes me nervously, unsure.

“Not far. Some distance back up the road. But you won’t find the hideout without me. I promise you that.”

I look him in the eyes. For all the fear that I find in them, it’s easy to forget he’s older and bigger than me, that the men who came for my blood and died in repayment were seasoned fighters. My levels more than evened the scales. They might as well be fighting Godtouched.

“Does anyone object to letting me take him?”

I don’t look at the farmers and don’t wait for their answer. I use the knife to ease the bounds loose around the prisoner’s hands and let him stand on his own.

“But sir,” begins Bushy Mustache, finding his courage. “The law says…”

“Will you hang him yourself?” I ask him.

I’m so tired. So very weary.

The look in his eyes tells me everything I need to know.

“Those of you with burns will want to find yellowberry root. Grind them to mush and rub the mixture on the affected area. It’ll help.”

I start up the road without waiting, the boy following close behind. But not too close. He’s weighing his options, wondering if he hasn’t jumped from the skillet into the fire.

“Are there others in the hideout?” I ask.

“Aye.”

“How many?”

“Lots.”

Looking over my shoulder, I find him scared still, but now defiant. He withstands my gaze for a moment before breaking eye contact.

“They’re not fighters, sir. They’re the families of the men you killed. Women and little kids.”

The revelation doesn’t strike me as deeply as it would have in different circumstances. As it should have.

There are conquerors and conquered. The fire just revealed which were which.

We walk in silence, making our way to the top of the granite wall where the road arches like a cat before plunging back into the valleys.

“You’re different from other Godtouched,” the boy says.

“I’m not Godtouched.”

The boy scoffs.

“Are you saying you’re like me?”

“I am.” I was. “I took part in the Challenge and made it out again.”

Just then, a neigh sounds from the curve in the path ahead. I tense, but the kid nearly jumps out of his skin.

“We’re here!” he yells. “Relo, Maj! Here!”

I sock him in the mouth to silence his cries and dash down the path. I can hear the clop of hooves on stone, but it’s not a gallop yet. If I’m quick enough…

Skidding on the curve in the road, I stop in front of a grisly scene. Carnage has painted the granite red and the smell of blood overwhelms, even when with the smoke is so heavy in the air. The grey mare looks at me with black, intelligent eyes and whinnies. Her coat is painted crimson, and the rock at her feet is a mess of gore and entrails belonging to two bodies. The bandit’s leader vacant eyes look up at the starry sky, seeing nothing, while his underling hangs from the reins, missing a leg.

The slap of feet on stone as the kid comes running down the road, bleeding from a busted lip. The way the breath catches in his throat, the strangled gasp, are all reminders of the reaction I failed to have.

“You…”

“You know I didn’t do it,” I say.

I let the mare smell my hand before touching her neck gently, then sling myself onto the saddle and pull the reins away from the dead body. “Whatever did isn’t here anymore.”

“You bastard,” he says quietly. “If you’d said you were this… If you’d… They didn’t need to die.”

“They didn’t need to live, either.”

I urge the mare forward, onto the road proper, and nod. She clops down the path slowly, and then back up again. I give her time to recover her nerve and for my legs to get used to the feeling of riding.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Kess,” he says after a beat.

“Stop robbing people, Kess. Do something else.”

He watches me, a mounted shadow, go all the way up the road, and then down again. I pass him by.

“Did you really pass the Challenge?”

“I did.”

“How was it?”

“Worst experience of my life.”

He doesn’t respond to that. As I plunge deeper into the road, trees cover the moon and make it hard to see the path. I Create Fire on an outstreched finger. The little flame burns, sputters, but it neither goes out nor hurts me. I Extinguish that and Create again, this time focusing the fire around my wrist and up my arm, far enough away from the mare.

“You should have a name too,” I whisper to the mare.

“Hey, firebrand! You’re going the wrong way,” Kess shouts down at me. “I thought you were going to Olvion.”

“Not bad,” I mutter to myself. And then, louder: “Changed my mind. Go on, Firebrand. Home we go.”

The mare understands, accepts her new name with grace. Her careful walk turns into an elegant trot. The fire lights our way.