Fire Mage (15 page)

The woman coughed slightly. “Welcome home, my son. What’s kept you away these long years? You've made a mother's heart grow sad, longing for her son.” She touched his shoulder and a million lines of electricity shot through his body. His eyes went wide, but he brushed off the feeling. He tried to imagine what it must be like for this woman to have her son abandon her.
 

“Let's get you out of these wet clothes.” She ambled over to a wooden chest in the corner. It creaked as she opened the lid. She peered inside, pulling out a green shirt and brown cotton pants. He eyed her cautiously as he accepted the gift.
 

“Would your lady friend be needing some clothes to change into as well?”
 

Mara nodded and rubbed her arms, looking hesitantly at Talis. It was too quiet. After they’d entered, it seemed the storm calmed down. Even the wind ceased. But Talis was glad for the fire, it melted his cold and fatigue. He was so exhausted he couldn’t think. Besides, he told himself, the woman was old and decrepit. Many old people in Naru had lost a bit of their minds.
 

She tottered back to the chest and pulled out a white gown. She lifted the gown, glanced at Mara, then smiled, and waddled over to her. “These clothes should fit you. My daughter wore them before the wind took her away.” Her eyes glistened and her face held the look of a mother betrayed by her children. Talis imagined his sister, Lia—how could she ever leave mother? They were inseparable.

Mara ran her fingers across the silky gown, then noticed Talis watching her. She held it over her chest, blushed, and searched the room for a place to change. She went behind the bed and Talis turned to let her dress.
 

“Much better.” She returned to the fire, and let the heat sink into her hands.

Talis removed his vest and shirt, and glanced up, noticing her curious eyes. She looked down shyly. He grabbed the fresh clothes and darted over to the corner, finding a quilt. He lifted it over his body and she giggled at him as he tried to change holding the quilt. He stumbled and dropped it several times, and she broke into laughter when he came back to the fire.

The old woman carried their wet clothes and hung them on a cord. She sat, returning to her stew. The smell of wild game and onions wafted through the air.

Talis collapsed onto a bearskin, too exhausted even to ask for food. His skin flushed as he faced the fire, his eyes drooping from the warm glow.
 

“So comfortable.” He yawned, wanting nothing other than to close his eyes and sleep.

Mara slipped next to him, lying behind with her arm wrapped over his chest. The heat from the fire slowly drained him of energy. He blinked and nodded off, still feeling the pouring rain and the wind hammering his neck. In his mind, the trees swayed back and forth, sheets of rain pelting his face.

Then the light in the hut dimmed. The room was quiet save the soft clacking of the wooden ladle stirring the stew. Mara pressed close to him, and soon he found himself drifting off. Faintly, as if off in another world, he thought he heard the sound of drums.

Shadows stretched long and thin and wound around the corner to the sleepy hut. Talis bolted awake in a fright. A horrendous scream, guttural and deep, echoed through the huts. The saddest sound, worse than a mourner's party on dreary winter's day. Who had made that cry? Drums outside poured out a tight rhythm.
 

“Wake up,” he told Mara. He smelled a horrible stench and wondered where it came from. He glanced over at Mara and realized she hadn’t heard a word he said. She was snoring. His nose pointed towards the iron pot. He stood, peered inside, and recoiled in terror. A man’s hairless head floated in the vile stew. Blanched eyes stared at nothing. He could see the exposed veins and throat where the head had been sliced off. Arms and legs and bones pressed thickly together. Talis’s stomach churned, as if the contents of the stew were inside of him. He covered his mouth and fought the bile pushing up his throat.
 

“Gods, are those—” He stopped and glanced around. Be quiet, Talis, he told himself.
A knot clenched his stomach and his mind raced. What was happening?

He shook Mara, but she only turned over. “There's something wrong. Get up!”
 

She rubbed her eyes. “What's that smell?”
 

He pointed at the stew. She stared into the pot, and gripped her stomach and fell back.
 

“Listen to that,” he whispered. There was something
terribly wrong outside; they’d fallen into a trap.

Drums kept pounding and now voices joined in, chanting strange words.
 

“Talis, what’s going on?”
 

“We need to look…but stay quiet.” Stalking under the canopy, he peeked around the corner. A fever flushed through his body. Lenora, Nuella, Rikar, and Nikulo danced around a fire filled with an ghostly green light. Bones were crumpled up inside. Talis realized Lenora’s father, the blademaster, and the sorceress were missing. A beautiful woman with long black hair stood in the center, cackling incantations. Her arms gestured seductively into the air. Talis gasped, and shrank back into the hut.
 

“They're all mesmerized,” he whispered.
 

“We have to do something” Mara gathered her clothes, and they dressed quickly.
 

Did they have a chance? If they tried to attack, it was two against many. The once old and useless looking men and women were renewed. Their faces plump and rosy, hair full, without a speck of silver; their skin radiated vitality and not a trace of their former wrinkles remained; their posture was straight and confident and they danced and twirled like fools.
 

Talis remembered the battle in the desert. Destroy the leader and the rest will fall. “Attack the witch—the woman with the long black hair. Let’s go around back and surprise them.” He wielded his sword, feeling the fire slither up his arm.

He followed Mara outside, finding a place to hide in the shadows. The dancers gyrated their bodies and surrounded the leader as she shook her hips to the beat. Lifting her hands to the stars, she cast another spell, pointing at Nikulo. His body jerked off the ground, arms and legs hanging limp.

In a panic, Mara raised her bow and fired a shot at the woman. The arrow plunged into her left side and she screamed and spun herself around, glaring at Mara. Another arrow struck the witch in the throat. She released a muffled gurgling sound as she clenched her neck. Her body flapped like a bird knocked from the sky. Talis ran towards the woman, tensed and ready to cut her down.

The drummers stopped the music and glowered at Mara. The woman’s eyes widened, as if witnessing death’s door. Her mouth hung open in horror and she gasped for air, like a carp plucked from a pond. But her words were trapped inside. She yanked the arrow from her neck and ripped out a chunk of bloodied flesh. A gush of blood drenched her robe. Then she flicked her wrists and twirled around in a brilliant whirl, and transformed herself back into the old woman from their hut.
 

Talis gaped at her. How could she morph like that?
 

As she gripped her neck, anger flashed across her face. She coughed out blood mixed with ash. After she fell to the ground, her body went into frenzied convulsions. The drummers turned towards her and started a peculiar rhythm, and the singers chanted in time with the drums and mimicked the movement of the witch’s seizures.
 

She rocketed up into the air and landed, standing like a queen before her subjects. She shouted at the moons, and released a deep, rolling laugh. When she lifted her chin, she revealed an unbroken neck.
 

“I am Ashtera. Who dares challenge me?” She let out a savage cry, and Talis covered his ears at the sound. Mara flew backwards from the witch’s powerful spell and skidded across the ground. She cried out in pain and clenched her temples.
 

“Bad girl, playing games with toys.” The witch wagged her clawed fingers at Mara.

Talis shouted at the woman, and thrust his sword at her chest. She tensed her fingers, as if tightening her grip around a ball. An immense pressure crushed his throat and he coughed and pushed back, trying to fight against the force of her power. A flow of blood streamed out of his nostril. He felt a terrible pain and knew he was dying, and understood that dying was the only way to ease the pain.

So he gripped harder on his sword, greater than the crushing force around his throat. It was as if the power of the sword had unlocked something inside, breathing life into his will. His mind was forged with a purpose: he must save the others. He couldn’t fail.

After he lifted his sword above his head, he brought it down until the hilt was in front of his chest. He tensed his arms, allowing the fire to surge through his body. With renewed force, he pressed back
hard
at Ashtera, slamming her against the ground. He leapt at her, slicing down as she lifted terrified eyes to face him. He felt the resistance from her neck bone as it met the blade. Her head twisted and fell to one side as its came partially off the trunk. The sword glowed blood-red as it struck. Ripples of fire washed through him.
 

The drummers and chanters stopped and gasped in horror. But they went back and stupidly beat their drums and chanted. All too late, for his second blow lopped her head off completely and sent it flying like a bloody windmill. The head lay still on the ground. Her eyes moved—searching for meaning.
 

Filaments of green light streamed out of her head and body. The dark life force that had sustained her coursed back into the fire. A pile of ash remained where she once lay.
I feel it
, he thought,
the fire in the sword
.
He growled with power, his eyes feasting on the blade.

The chanters and drummers stood in shock. Talis turned his gaze towards them. He had to kill them. As he charged, the drummers reacted, beating out an angry tune. The chanter's strained voices sang a shrill, powerful song. He flung his hands to cover his ears and his sword fell, slicing into the wet soil. Under that immense pain, he crashed to his knees.

The drummers found a new rhythm and sent the voices of demons to invade his mind. A surge of electricity shot along the left side of his body, great jolts wracking his heart. A sudden command from a demon’s voice echoed inside:
smash your head, that stone, do it now!
He reached out and exhaled, fighting back. For all the magic Master Viridian had taught him, why couldn’t he have said anything about resisting this kind of magic? He grabbed the stone and pounded the ground, then glowered at them. He wouldn’t stop now. Jumping forward, he hammered the drummer's head, knocking him back.
 

So the chanters found a low voice, like the sound of ocean waves gurgling through pebbles. They focused on Talis and delivered their merged power at his body. He was whipped back until he crashed into a hut. He slammed his fist against the wet soil, allowing his anger to build up the fire inside.
 

The drummers sped up the rhythm until it built into a stuttered frenzy. Talis glared at them through the torn hut, determined to win. They moved and swayed to the song of the chanters, the light from an unholy fire filling their eyes. Dark magic flowed from each note.
 

He pushed himself up, and conjured flames in his mind’s eye. Filled with fire, it surged in at each breath, enveloping his lungs. His blood pulsed with heat and he was fire itself. His palms radiated power. The breath he held inside flamed to a feverish pitch until he exhaled and fire burst from his hands, spinning like a dancing dragon.
 

The flames punished a chanter's head, pouring into his eyes and gushing out of his feet. The chanter screamed in agony. His writhing body issued forth a stream of fire from his mouth, which ate into the drummer nearby.
 

The chanter and the drummer melted into ash and only their screams lingered in the forest.
 

Talis gazed, defiance raging in his eyes. He roared a horrific yell and fire exploded all around him: a multi-fingered fire ripping into village huts, setting them aflame. The fire tendrils issuing from him went wild, scorching tree trunks, drummers and chanters alike, until it seemed as if the whole world would turn into a blazing inferno. He felt a terrific agony inside and his bones and tendons buckled under the pressure.

Mara leapt aside as a wave of flame tore in front of her. She looked stunned. Like a rising crescendo, the flames billowed higher: unceasing, unrelenting, and caring little for where they struck. Another flame nearly seared her hair as it ripped past her.

“Talis, stop!” she yelled. He heard her voice, as if from a faraway land, muddled by time, as if a great ocean was in between. Inside his mind, he pictured the fires of the Underworld, a sea of churning red and black embers. More flames leapt out until it seemed the air itself would take to flame.