Embrace the Fire (3 page)

Quinn shrugged. “It doesn't matter. I don't care who you are; you fight well, lad, better than most soldiers with years of experience. I want someone with your expertise in my detail. I could even find room for you in the leadership ranks, if you've a mind.”

Ayden turned toward the bar. Quinn followed him inside, stopping near the doorway as Ayden approached the bar. The maid wiped the wood surface until it shone. Ayden dug in his pocket and pulled out the last few sceptremarks he had, tossing them onto the counter.

The maid eyed him. “That's a pow'rful lot o' drink, mister. Sure you want that much?”

“It's for the broken table and a bit of information.”

The maid stared at the money. “What information d'ye need?”

Ayden lowered his voice. “I'm looking for information on Leighton, Chief of the Dryad Dells some years ago.”

The girl's eyebrows rose. “Why, the very same dwelt in the woods west o' Delling. 'T'were the six-trunked oak he lived in, about three fieldspans outside the village. His daughter still lives there, in the Charred Oak.”

Ayden nearly smiled. It had seemed unlikely he'd find any answers, but this was promising. He nodded and turned to go.

“Sure you don't want that drink, mister?” she asked. She blushed when he looked back at her. “On the house if you'll let me drink one with you.” She tilted her chin up, meeting his eyes, a move that reminded Ayden so strongly of Kinna that pain lanced his stomach, and Kinna's vivid green eyes and fiery hair swam before him.

He loved her, by the Stars, but by a cruel twist of fate, he'd never have her. She would wed her brown-haired Pixiedimn as soon as the upheaval between Lismaria and West Ashwynd was over, and he'd die before he'd see her bear children that bore the resemblance of the union. When he'd kissed her the last time he'd seen her, he'd wrapped the memory of her soft lips and tear-moistened lashes and shoved it behind jealous thoughts where he wouldn't be tempted to retrieve it.

He shook his head. “Thank you, miss. Take care.” He turned for the door.

By the Great Star, he missed her.

“I'm staying at the Sign of the Eagle, lad, if you change your mind.” Quinn's voice caught Ayden on his way out. Ayden gave no sign that he had heard.

S
earing
pain heated Ayden's hands, spreading up his arms into his shoulders as he strode along the sidewalk toward the edge of the village, and he stopped, raising his hands to his mouth to blow cool air on his skin. It did next to nothing, and he felt a scream rising. He held it back with an effort. He couldn't flee the pain.

He was Dragondimn; heat wasn't supposed to affect him like this. It had to be the Amulet. His thoughts returned to the scrolls he'd read in the Dryad Dells' library only days ago, but they didn't stay there. As always, at least in the last four months, they returned to Kinna. When he'd said goodbye to her four months ago, excusing himself from the torture of watching her wed Julian, he hadn't realized that the Amulet would curse him with another type of pain that would follow him without relief. He'd traveled from place to place, always wary of drawing too close to The Crossings, always careful not to give his true name. If what the scroll said was true, and Sebastian owned the other side of the Amulet's earthly elements, he would be searching for Ayden without mercy.

He rubbed his fingers together, gritting his teeth against the burn. This was by far the longest episode of pain he'd had. He wondered if an apothecary would have herbs that could dent the pain, but his money was gone. Helga, the
taibas
who had given him the Amulet to help him break his Ash-Touch curse, might have been able to advise him, but she lived too close to The Crossings, and he needed to stay far from there if he valued his life.

Ayden stared at the thick blanket of forest that spread before him, a deeper black than the night sky. Three fieldspans, the barmaid had said. It would have been easier in the daylight, but he wanted answers
now.

His jaw tightened and his dry eyes burned nearly as badly as his hands.

He lashed out, his fist pounding angrily into the wood siding of a building.

“Keep your dirty paws to yourself, mister,” a voice at the window shouted.

Ayden jerked his gaze toward the voice and then paused when he saw the board he'd hit. The swinging light from the hanging torches arced weirdly over the siding. In the gleam, a dark fist-print decorated the board. Ayden glanced at his hand, but he could see no evidence of ink or anything else that would have rubbed off.

He clenched his hand into a fist again and placed it carefully against the mark. It matched point for point exactly the outline of his fingers.

Smoke curled in wisps from the board, and Ayden yanked his hand away. The mark was blacker than before.

Awe mixed with dread seized his stomach.
It's getting worse!

He'd broken his curse. He was supposed to be able to touch again without killing another person. Even a Dragondimn wouldn't come away from the Ash-Touch unscarred. And now his hands were setting things aflame.

“Noooo!” he shouted, his voice breaking.

“Here you, if you're going to be hitting my house and moaning on my porch step, I've a mind to take a broom to you. Now be off with you!” The figure in the house appeared in the doorway, a broom in her hand.

Ayden stumbled off the step into the road, mumbling an apology without thinking about it.

That couldn't be right. He'd fought Quinn barehanded, and the man hadn't complained. True, his hand was hotter now than it had been when he'd fought, but surely...

The trees enveloped him as he entered the forest, and as his pain increased, so did his strides, until he was sprinting, fleeing the torture that wouldn't leave him. Up hills and down, he ran, over ridges, through hemlock groves, spruce, ash, maple. The gurgle of a stream crossed his ears, and he angled toward it, its clear, liquid music slicing through his internal screams. He struggled through the underbrush, past several trees, and collapsed on the muddy banks.

He stared in horror at his hands. They glowed ember-orange in the deep blackness.

He plunged his hands into the stream-bed. The water hissed and steam wafted around Ayden's face. He sighed in relief; he could still feel the heat, but it wasn't so oppressive.

After a while, he sank onto the riverbank, keeping his hands in the water. He glanced at the stars to check his position. He'd run at least three fieldspans.

A voice yanked him to his feet. “It will get better, you know.” It came from the tree on the opposite side of the bank. A Dryad studied him from where she stood, wound around her oak tree, twirling her hair with her finger.

Ayden shook himself from his shock. “Am I near the grove of the Charred Oak?”

The Dryad nodded. “Aye.” She motioned to the tree behind her. “There is the grove, and this is the tree.”

The oak's bark shone black in the moonlight, and though Ayden couldn't tell the actual color, a faintly burnt scent wafted his way. He sank back onto the ground and placed his burning hands in the water again. “What gets better?” he asked warily.

The Dryad nodded at his hands. “The heat will dissipate if you discover how to use it.”

Ayden lifted an eyebrow. “You've seen this before?”

A chorus of giggles echoed through the tree branches at his words. The Dryad tilted her head. “Not often, no, but I have seen it. It is the work of
taibe
, is it not?”

Ayden returned to his feet. His hands shot heat up to his shoulders. “Aye. The Amulet—”

“Aye, it is the work of the Amulet.”

Yes, yes, the Amulet.
The leaves whispered the words through the dark woods.

Ayden cast his glance at the unnatural breeze that curled around him. “But—how? Can you explain, Dryad?”

The Dryad settled herself comfortably at the base of her tree. “Years ago, my father fought a great
taibos.
” She looped her brown curls over her shoulder and combed her fingers gently through them. “They waged war for a se'ennight, day and night until the moon disappeared behind a blanket of blackness. My father had nowhere to go for help. So he rooted himself into his tree, becoming one with it, and sent his roots deep, drinking life from the underground streams, and no matter what curses the
taibos
hurled at him, he wouldn't fall; his roots went too deep. So at last, the
taibos
left.”

“Your father won?” Ayden had expected a different ending.

“Nay, he didn't.” Leaves drooped from the oak branches to the ground, settling sadly on the creek bed. “The
taibos
returned a week later and hung the Amulet from my father's unsuspecting hand.”

“The Great Amulet? The one wrought by the Seer Fey with Dragonkind and Aarkan the Firebringer?”

“Aye, the very same. It did the trick. My father felt the heat, the same searing heat that you are surely feeling. His skin was no longer brown, but orange, and glowing, and one day...”

Ayden trailed his super-heated hands through the cool water. “One day?”

“One day, he burned until there was nothing left of him but dry, smoldering char.”

Ayden splashed into the creek toward the Dryad, but she scrambled to her feet with a cry and disappeared inside her tree.

“Wait!” Ayden cried. “I'm sorry, I'm not going to hurt you. Please, come back out.”

The petite face peeped from the wood of the tree, and slowly, the Dryad stepped back onto the woodland moss.

Ayden waited until she relaxed a little. “So, you're saying that this won't go away until I burst into flame? Because I feel pretty near that now.”

The Dryad shook her head. “It was because my father didn't learn to use it that he burned.” She waited, expectation in her face as she watched Ayden, but confusion clouded his mind.

“I'm sorry, I still don't understand.”

“The Amulet released the Fire-Touch to my father, which meant that the
taibos
who gave him the Amulet received the Ice-Touch. Fire and Ice—those are the earthly elements represented in the Amulet, two sides of the same power. The divine elements of the Amulet are Ash and Healing, which represent death and life, respectively.”

The Dryad nodded toward his heated fingers. “Had my father released his gifts, they wouldn't have stayed bottled inside him, waiting for the point at which it all boiled over.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I read.” She smiled. “I assume you read, as well, since you knew to come here. All of this is recorded in the Lismarian annals of Andrachen history, the written details of Aarkan's lineage, as well as the newer histories of West Ashwynd. Also,” she said, tracing her finger over the bark of her tree, “it's a common tenet of
taibe
. Magic that remains inside will eventually destroy you. You must learn to use it, and wisely.”

Ayden lifted his hands and stared at them. They still flickered heated orange in the silver moonlight. “You're saying I have magic?”

The Dryad simply watched him, but the echoing laughter among the leaves swirled around him.

“You do not have inherent magic—that belongs only to the Seer Fey. But you may have been gifted with it if you had come in contact with the Amulet or if you had been placed under a
taibos
'
s
hex. Just remember, whether or not you have
taibe
, you must take care to train that particular gift.” She lifted a hand in farewell and stepped back inside of her tree.

Ayden rinsed his hands beneath the clear creek, and then turned his steps toward the village.

Beneath the Sign of the Eagle, he stopped and squared his shoulders. He needed to find the Amulet, and to find the Amulet, he needed to hunt down Sebastian, who had it.

Quinn's earlier offer echoed through his mind. Perhaps if he enlisted in Sebastian's army, it might bring him closer to the man he sought. And of course, he needed money to carry on. Even the bravest soldiers did not fight without food. Also, a sense of purpose, order, and discipline would drown out thoughts of a pair of green eyes that drove him mad with longing.

He shoved the guilt away. It would make no difference to Kinna whether he joined the army or not. Her future was tied up with Julian's, not his.

He entered the inn and approached the innkeeper to ask which room he'd let to Quinn, Elvendimn Captain.

As he spread his fingers on the counter, the wood darkened, smoking and molding to the shape of his hands.

A
door slammed
in the corridor, and footsteps thudded toward Cedric's cell. Heavy keys clanked with each step. Cedric glanced dully at the cell door, waiting for the daily mealy apple and slice of bread to slide through the hatch. He'd long given up hope of release or of ever seeing sunlight again.

Four months, he'd sat captive in Sebastian's dungeons, and four months of near-starvation and dehydration played havoc with his muscles.

Instead of the hatch opening, the keys rattled in the lock and the door scraped across the dirty straw that blanketed his cell. Cedric struggled to sit up.

“Dragon-Master.” Lanier's voice echoed in the small cell.

Cedric glared at the man. Lanier was Sebastian's Commander-in-Chief, and one who had every right to hate him—Sebastian had given Cedric Lanier's place at the head of his armies four months ago. After the Tournament, Lanier had quickly regained his position when Cedric had fled the palace with his newly-discovered twin sister.

“What do you want?” Cedric croaked, his throat dry.

Lanier dismissed the jailer, who closed the door and clanked his keys in the lock. Cedric was surprised when the Commander sank onto the floor next to him. “I am sending you to the battlefields.”

“What battlefields?”

“Sebastian’s forces are gathering on the Forgotten Plains to face Erlane’s possible invasion. War has not been declared yet; even now, both sides may hope for peace. But tension roils, and Sebastian wishes for you to be present. He still hopes to utilize your gifts with the Dragons.”

Cedric pushed himself up farther, looking directly into Lanier's dark eyes. “I will never use my command of Dragons to help Sebastian. They are not beasts to use recklessly on a king's whim.” It was at times like this that Cedric hated his gift. The Dragons would obey his slightest command, and such power lit the hearts of those greedy for control, Sebastian among them.

Lanier's expression didn't change. He was silent for a long moment before he nodded. “I suspected as much. I'm afraid you don't have any choice, though. I'm sending you to the Plains, and you will be used on the field of battle, should it come to that.”

Cedric shook his head. “I don't understand something, Commander Lanier.”

Lanier said nothing, waiting.

“I've known you for months now; you're a decent man, one whom all your soldiers revere. I don't understand how you can serve my uncle, or how you can hold such loyalty toward him.”

Smothering silence blanketed the cell. Lanier rose, his hands behind his back. “Let me tell you a story, Cedric.”

Cedric tilted his head. He hadn't expected this.

“Once, a wealthy young man sojourned with his servant far and wide. The young man was from a family that never wanted for food or clothing or protection, but the servant had the opposite background. Before he found his post with the young man, he'd nearly starved to death. He was the only hope his mother and baby sister had to stave off hunger, and he went without food himself to keep them fed.”

Cedric shifted uncomfortably. “Who was the servant?”

Lanier stopped pacing and stared at Cedric, ignoring the question. “One day, the wealthy young man found the poor lad, and in a rather uncharacteristic fit of compassion and because they were of an age, he gave the boy food to take to his mother and his sister and then offered the boy a position working for him.”

“You're speaking of Sebastian,” Cedric said, leaning back against the wall. “Although why he should show you favor when his mead is cruelty and his bread is licentiousness, I don't know.”

Lanier raised a thick eyebrow. “It was because of Liam,” he murmured. “Liam was a paragon, every family's dream son. He excelled in all his training, whether it was swordplay or political study. Handsome, always smiling ... he was the favorite. Few ever saw his treatment of Sebastian, or if they did, they said nothing. At first, it was merely rude remarks, snide comments, things to remind him that he was the less favored son.”

Cedric struggled to rise, but his legs were too weak. He collapsed against the wall. “You impugn my father's honor?”

“I know only what Sebastian has entrusted to me, and I only tell you this to help you understand why I serve him.”

Cedric contented himself with a glare. Lanier continued. “Liam was the worst sort of bully. He would corner Sebastian in the stables and use him for hitting practice. When Sebastian tried to tell someone, they laughed it off. Liam was the perfect child; he would never hit his brother. Later, he graduated to swords, even knives. Others would accept only the explanation that the younger prince had carelessly wandered too close to a soldier in training or something similar. No one—
no one
—ever believed Liam capable of mistreating his younger brother.” Lanier returned to his seat beside Cedric.

“I still don't see the reasoning,” Cedric said. “Perhaps Sebastian did suffer cruelty, though not at the hands of my father. That is a blatant lie. Even if he had, it is no excuse for the despotic treatment he's shown his own people.”

Lanier shook his head. “I have to look beyond that, Dragon-Master. I must. Because he looked beyond my situation and saw the desperation that buffeted me.”

Cedric was silent as Lanier fisted his hands in his lap. “Two years, I had been in his service. Every coin I earned in wage, I sent home to my family. Sebastian gave me leave to go visit my mother and sister when I could, although it was not often as my village was some distance from ClarenVale, Lismaria's capital and Sebastian's home.”

“How kind of him,” Cedric said sarcastically.

“He accompanied me on my visits, I suspect, to get out of the castle and away from Liam. When last he accompanied me—” emotion thickened his voice, “—raiders from the outlying mountains attacked my village. They swooped in and burned every house but the temple, where they crammed all the people as they carried out their destruction. Their plans were obvious; they had piled kindling along the perimeter of the temple and barred its doors. We had seen the smoke from afar, and when we arrived, it was nearly too late. The torch-bearers were at the temple's woodpiles, their flames were ready. I just—froze.”

Cedric blinked. “Why?”

“Something snapped inside of me. The windows of the temple were high, so we couldn't see inside, but we could hear the shrieks. It—it was horrible.”

“They all died,” Cedric said.

“Nay.” Lanier shook his head. “Nay, Sebastian was the hero that day. We didn't have many Lismarian guards with us; there were perhaps ten altogether and twenty of the raiders, but we swept into the village and killed all the attackers before releasing the people from the church.”

“So you're my uncle's loyal follower because of that day.”

“Aye.” A pregnant pause ensued. “Aye, I owe Sebastian my life and my mother and sister's lives as well. His rescue of me from poverty and starvation was one thing; his salvation of my mother and sister from a blazing death was another. There is no turning back from that.”

Cedric said nothing else. He couldn't erase what he'd seen Sebastian do—the torture evident on the body of Rennis, the Lismarian spy, the quick orders of imprisonment and death for anyone who dared to cross the King. Sebastian had sentenced his own nephew to the dungeons where Cedric sat on the brink of starvation
because
of his uncle's cruelty. But a tiny portion of his mind could perhaps understand Lanier's reasoning.

“So you are to send me to the battlefield come morning because Sebastian demands it.” He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “So be it.”

T
he cart jolted
Cedric from an exhausted sleep as it dipped into the rutted road leading south. He blinked heavy eyelids at the six guards lining the cart, and he struggled to sit up amid the chains that bound his wrists and ankles. None of the guards moved to help him.

“Water,” he croaked through his parched lips. His last sip had been at dawn that morning. It was now near dusk.

The guards continued to ignore him. Cedric knew Sebastian's strategy: keep the prisoner weak. Keep him too sick to run. Above all else, keep him away from the Dragons until instructed otherwise.

When they'd left the palace, it was the first time he'd seen the sun in four months. Having lived outdoors all his life until the past year, he'd at times thought he would go insane. Dreams had passed through his head of his Centaur foster mother, Shaya, of the Dragons who had nested him, of the Ember with whom he had
almost
achieved
psuche
, of his twin sister, Kinna. The visions seemed elusive and ephemeral, spectres of tattered wishes.

The cart halted with a lurch, and Cedric smashed his head against the board siding. The bustle and confusion of people and creatures eked through the vehicle's opening. Cedric pushed to his feet. Two guards took his arms and shoved him toward the cart's mouth.

Cedric sucked in his breath. Spread before him were thousands of tents, set in rows, and men milling along the pathways between the tents. In the distance, the dull thud of war drums echoed off the far-flung Rue Ridges, and a dark line along the Channel of Lise's horizon showed a mass of movement.

“What's that?” he asked, nodding toward the moving skyline.

“Nicholas Erlane's navy,” the guard grunted, pushing Cedric off the cart to land shakily on his feet. “This way.”

“So the war is beginning?” Cedric's knees trembled; he struggled to keep up with the guard.

“'Tain't sure o' naught, yet. 'Is Grace has been tryin' to avoid it.” He glanced around the encampment. “Parley talks be set to start in T'Crossings; who knows when t'ey'll reach an end?”

“Nicholas Erlane himself has crossed the Channel of Lise? He's set foot on West Ashwynd's soil?” Cedric's first thought was of Lianna, Erlane's beautiful niece, whom he'd placed on a boat, dispatching her back to her uncle. He wondered where she was now.

“Aye, t'coward set foot on our soil, but 'e's taken himself up to sit in grand ease and comfort in The Crossings to talk peace with King Sebastian.” The soldier snorted through a bulbous nose. “War won't begin if t'Kings gain what t'ey want, but if t'ey can't find middle ground, t'skies will fall.”

Cedric panted behind the guard, his flagging lungs no longer used to working so hard. “Which do you think the more likely to win, if it should come to that? Nicholas Erlane or Sebastian?”

The guard looked him full in the face, planting his feet lengths from the tent. “Look ye, lad, ye may be the likeness of yar father from beyond the grave, but ye can pray to the Stars that ye never gain 'is kingdom. West Ashwynd is in good hands with Sebastian.” He turned back to the tent. “Far better than it were when King Liam sat the throne, and that's fact.”

Surprise gutted Cedric. He'd wondered before about the armies' loyalty to such a man as Sebastian. He'd wondered how the despotic and cruel King seemed to maintain loyalty amongst his soldiers. Never before his talk with Commander Lanier had he heard blame attached to his father's name.

The soldier gripped Cedric's arm and pulled him toward the tent. An important-looking military man stood in front of it; Cedric recognized him as Commander Jerrus. The soldier had been head of Sebastian's military Council before his promotion over the summer. Within the armies' ranks, he stood just under Commander-in-Chief Lanier.

Jerrus eyed Cedric as he approached. “I understood this prisoner was to accompany Commander Lanier when he arrived.”

“Nay, m'lord.” The guard on Cedric's right held out a scrolled parchment sealed with the royal crest. “We're following His Grace's orders to bring him down here and imprison him at the place where he can command the Dragons best, should Erlane's forces come ashore.”

Jerrus took the scroll and broke the seal, quickly scanning the missive. “Right,” he said at last, curling the parchment in his hand. “Take him to the gaol tent.”

“Aye, m'lord.” The guards pulled Cedric up an incline and past several more tents.

At the top of the incline, another large tent awaited them, flying a black banner emblazoned with the symbol of a gaol. Canvas cloaked the gaol tent on all sides, but the wind caught the opening and blew a flap straight out. Iron bars encased the tent inside the flaps. Then Cedric understood. He wasn't to be set free. He wasn't even to fight in Sebastian's army.

He was to be kept in a cage, like a bird whose wings had been clipped.

Fury, no less virulent for the weakness that ate at his body, filled him. He needed to get out; he needed to be free. Hatred for Sebastian closed in on him like dark, smothering walls, and when the guard backed out and turned the key to the cage in its lock, he gripped the bars and released a roar that encompassed his rage at his uncle.

The guards paid him no mind. Their conversation hardly registered. “Commander Jerrus told us to return to the command tent when we'd locked him up.”

“Who's watching 'im?”

“We'll be back in a few minutes. Door's locked; 'e ain't going nowhere.”

Cedric slumped to the ground, the irons on his wrists clanking as his hands flopped helplessly in his lap. A tear snaked down his cheek, and he wiped it impatiently on his filthy tunic sleeve. When they'd pulled him from his prison cell in The Crossings, a frisson of hope had filtered through his consciousness, a ray of light in stark, cold darkness. Light. Light meant hope. Somehow, he would find a way to escape.

Instead, he was trapped once again.

“Cedric!”

The whisper came from the corner of the tent, the side away from the rest of the army tents. Cedric jerked his head up. The form of his twin sister huddled beneath the canvas curtain on the other side of the bars.

“
Kinna
!” He scrambled toward her, glancing over his shoulder at the door. He couldn't see the guards outside, but all was silent. “Kinna, they'll catch you; Sebastian still hunts you! What are you doing here?”

“Rescuing you, obviously.” Kinna rolled her eyes. “Listen, we don't have much time—”

“No, you don't.” Worry crept into Cedric's voice. “The guards will be back any minute.”