Dreams of Fire and Gods 2: Fire (20 page)

As a desperate cry rose up in Sael’s throat, Koreh’s strong hands suddenly grabbed the front of his tunic and yanked him down and forward. Sael felt the change in direction painfully in his neck, and then he fell forward on top of the young man who had saved his life so many times in the past… and had just managed to save it again.

They lay together for a long moment, panting with the terror of what might have happened. Koreh’s arms wrapped around Sael’s body and held him tightly.

K
OREH
held Sael for a long time, until his own body stopped shaking. He kept seeing Sael tumbling off those fragmented steps over and over again in his mind.
Damn it!
Why hadn’t he been able to think of a way of keeping Sael out of this?

Eventually he had to let go of Sael and get back to their main purpose— rescuing the Iinu Shavi. But he still kept a hold of Sael’s hand until they had safely entered the hall through the shattered door. They were both limping a bit, their legs and feet sore from the landing on hard marble. Koreh had skinned one knee, though he did his best to ignore it.

The inside of the hall was almost completely dark. There were windows built into the side walls, massive ones at least two stories tall, open to the air but with heavy iron lattices set into them. On this dark night, little light spilled into the room through them. Still, Koreh and Sael had no difficulty seeing.

Koreh had seen this chamber in his dreams, but dark and empty like this, it seemed far larger. Everywhere, as they moved down the length of massive columns, he could see charring and scorch marks from that day a thousand years ago when the Stronni had attempted to incinerate the Iinu Shavi, but there was no trace of the piled bodies he’d seen. It was possible, of course, they had rotted and decayed to dust by now. But Koreh suspected they’d simply been removed. Had they eventually awoken? Or were they still in some kind of enchanted sleep? He’d thought them dead when he first had the vision, but he knew now the Taaweh disliked killing if another way could be found.

Koreh realized he’d never let go of Sael’s hand as they walked. He turned to look at the young man and saw Sael’s eyes were wide with wonder and awe. Not surprising—he was seeing what had once been the Great Hall of his gods. Even if the chamber hadn’t been enormous and impressive in and of itself, that knowledge would certainly fill someone with awe. It meant little to Koreh. He’d turned his back on these “gods” long ago. They were to be feared, as anything powerful and dangerous should be feared. But nothing more than that.

The pillars that had guided them this far ceased when they approached the end of the building that held the throne. Here the ceiling was molded into a dome, across which a magical night sky, bright with stars, still slowly moved.

But Koreh’s attention was drawn instead to what lay underneath the dome, on the floor before the massive gold throne. It was a sarcophagus made of white marble but with a lid made of the clearest glass he’d ever seen, from inside of which a golden light emanated. As he approached the sarcophagus, drawing Sael along with him, he saw the light wasn’t coming from a flame or any other natural source of light. It was caused by the body laid out in the sarcophagus—the woman herself was shimmering with light.
It was the Iinu Shavi.

She was the most beautiful woman Koreh had ever seen. Her face appeared to be older than Koreh and Sael, though still youthful, and though she wore no makeup, her lips were full and red and her cheeks flushed. Her golden hair billowed around her head like a pillow and covered the white silk cushion she lay upon down past her waist. Unlike the Iinu Shaa, everything about his queen spoke of life and youthful beauty. Even in this deathlike pose, her breath stilled, it was clear she was still alive.

Koreh heard Sael gasp at the sight of the goddess and then say in a whisper, “I dreamed about her!”

“When?” This was the first Koreh had heard of this and he felt inexplicably jealous, as if the dreams should have been for him alone. He quickly pushed that notion out of his head.

“A couple of days ago,” Sael said. “She’s the Iinu Shavi.”

“I guessed as much,” Sael said, rolling his eyes at him. “But what do we do now? How do we get her out of there?”

Koreh knew that after the Stronni had succeeded in rendering the Iinu Shavi unconscious, they had tried everything they could think of to kill her permanently. They had tried to burn her and cut her, but nothing had succeeded. It had even proven impossible to cut a single strand of her flaxen hair.

So he replied flatly, “We break the glass.”
It seemed as good an idea as any. Koreh swung his arm over his head and brought his fist down on the center of the glass lid with all his might. To his surprise, his hand merely bounced painfully off the glass, leaving it unharmed.

“Or perhaps not,” Sael said, failing to suppress a smile as Koreh rubbed his sore wrist with his left hand.

But Koreh was undeterred. “Is there a loose stone or something we could break it with?”

They searched but came up empty. The chamber was barren of anything that wasn’t firmly attached to the floor or walls.

“Was that part of the Taaweh plan?” Sael asked him. “‘Break the glass’?”

Koreh frowned at him. “No. But it would have made things a lot easier if we could have just lifted her out of this thing and thrown her out the door.” Seeing Sael’s shocked expression, he added, “It wouldn’t have hurt her. She can’t be harmed or killed. The moment she came into contact with the ground, she’d be free of her… trance, or whatever it is.”
“Well, obviously we can’t do that.”

Koreh was unable to look Sael in the eye when he said, “I know. I’d been hoping…. But there’s only one way. I have to transfer my life energy into her.”

He’d expected Sael to protest. The danger must be obvious. But when he looked up into Sael’s face, Sael had an expression of grim determination. “I know,” he said. “They told me that it would be the only way.”

There was long silence while they looked into each other’s eyes, their fear and need for each other laid bare. Then Sael said in a small, unsteady voice, “They also told me that it might kill you.”

Sael looked back into his eyes, but neither of them could think of anything more to say. Koreh reached out a hand and silently placed it on the glass of the sarcophagus. Then he closed his eyes.

The Taaweh hadn’t taught him how to make the connection—not specifically —but after his experience at the pond, feeding energy to the Iinu Shaa, Koreh found he knew how. Perhaps that day had been his instruction, the Taaweh teaching his body without his conscious mind being involved. Now all he had to do was reach out to the Iinu Shavi with his thoughts and the connection was made.

There was a strong jolt as the energy was suddenly yanked from his body, and he staggered a bit. He felt Sael’s hand grip his arm, but he shook it off. He didn’t know what might happen to Sael if they were in contact during the exchange.

It was painful this time. Koreh doubted whether the Iinu Shavi was even aware of it in her deep slumber, but she was pulling so strongly from him that he felt his body begin to weaken immediately. He slumped to his knees, still keeping his hand against the side of the sarcophagus. When he opened his eyes, he was no longer able to focus clearly. How much of his life energy would a god need? Possibly more than was contained in a single mortal man, he thought. He wasn’t afraid of dying, necessarily, but what if it was all for nothing? What if the Iinu Shavi took everything he had and it still wasn’t enough for her to break free?

S
AEL
watched in horror as Koreh crumpled to the floor, unable to hold his hand up any longer. He lay back with his head and shoulders pressed against the side of the marble sarcophagus, still allowing the goddess to draw the life out of him through the contact.

A nightmarish change was beginning to come over Koreh. His body and face were beginning to wither, as if he were aging years with every passing moment. His jet-black hair paled and turned an ashen gray; his eyes that had often seemed as crystal clear as water to Sael were rapidly growing milky, as if cataracts were forming in them. Within moments, he seemed to have aged far more than humanly possible, and his breath was coming in shallow, wheezing gasps.

The Iinu Shaa had told Sael this would happen, that Koreh wouldn’t have the strength to wake the Iinu Shavi—no single human could. But two humans linked together might succeed, if the link was strong enough.

This was the true reason Sael had to be here. Koreh couldn’t do this alone, despite his insistence that he could. He’d been so stubborn about it that the Taaweh had kept this part from him, confiding to Sael alone that they were
both
necessary—that they
both
had to be willing to give up all their life energy to the Iinu Shavi. Only then could she break the bonds that held her.

So even after seeing what the link was doing to Koreh’s body, Sael reached down and took one of Koreh’s gnarled, shriveled hands in his own and held it tightly, even when Koreh tried to pull away. He heard Koreh make a small noise in his throat, as if in protest, but he was too weak to articulate anything clearly.

Sael closed his eyes and reached deep into himself, as the Taaweh had taught him, opening a channel between him and Koreh. He felt the jolt as the connection between him and his lover was established and the energy began to flow. It felt as if he were a bottle that had become uncorked and now his life was gushing out of him, filling Koreh up, only to be drained again into the sarcophagus. Sael felt himself weakening and knelt beside Koreh.

For a brief time, the connection seemed to strengthen Koreh. His eyes grew clearer and he was able to lift his face to meet Sael’s gaze. “He said… only one of us would die,” Koreh croaked in a voice barely above a whisper.

Sael used what little strength he had left to lift Koreh’s hand to his mouth and kiss it gently. His own hand now looked like that of a very old man and his vision was growing blurry. “Why would we want that?”

Koreh looked as if he wanted to say something more, but suddenly something behind Sael caught his attention and his eyes widened. Sael turned and saw that one of the torches on the wall was burning.

There had been no light at all when they’d come in. Was this a sign that the Iinu Shavi was awakening? But no. This didn’t feel like Taaweh magic—for one thing, the flame wasn’t blue. It was the typical yellow flame of a reed torch soaked in tallow. Sael had been studying most of his life to be a
vönan
. He knew Stronni magic when he saw it. They’d discovered the rescue attempt.

As Sael watched, more torches burst into flame along the walls, one by one, until the entire hall was ablaze with light. Then Koreh suddenly gasped, “Look out!”

There wasn’t time to hide or even really to duck. Sael barely had the strength to move, at any rate. He turned his head and saw a ball of white-hot flame burst through the door of the hall, bearing down upon them. His eyes squeezed shut reflexively and he flinched as he heard the ball explode. But there was no heat and he felt nothing burning him. Sael opened his eyes to see Koreh, still withered with age, opening his eyes too. Koreh blinked up at him, appearing confused, before turning to look at where the fireball had been just a moment before. Sael followed his gaze.

The floor was freshly scorched just a few feet from where they sat, as were the pillars near them. But the scorch marks ended in a sharp curved line, on the other side of which the floor was untouched. It was as if the fireball had exploded against some kind of invisible barrier.

A woman was walking slowly toward them from the far end of the hall. Like the male they’d seen early that evening, there was no doubt she was one of the Stronni. Her stature was taller than that of any human woman, yet she was perfectly proportioned. Unlike the man, she wasn’t naked—the Stronni did not allow strangers to look upon their women, according to the sacred texts Sael had studied in the archives. But her elaborately embroidered silver-and-blue silks were draped in such a way as to suggest flawless curves and large, firm breasts. Her beauty was somehow darker, worldlier than that of the Iinu Shavi, but she was strikingly beautiful nonetheless, with raven-colored hair cascading down her shoulders, interwoven with threads of silver. She wore a silver diadem, and Sael knew without being told that this was Imen, the queen of the Stronni.

“Two mortal men,” Imen observed, her voice a soft purr. “And old men, at that….”

She hesitated a moment, regarding them shrewdly. “No. I think not. Boys… made to look old. I recognize you now. The reluctant
dekan
of Harleh and his
nimen
.” Imen saw everything, more so than the
ömem
who devoted themselves to her, and it was no surprise that she knew them. “You’ve managed to come farther than the Taaweh could in a thousand years.” She laughed softly. “Though of course they put you up to it. What could they possibly have promised you that would be worth sacrificing your lives for?”

When Sael and Koreh remained silent, she said, “I know what you’re trying to do, but even if it were possible to wake her from this sleep, you would both die in the process. You’re nearly dead already.”

Imen drew near the place where the scorch marks ended and stopped, looking down at the line on the floor with curiosity. “It doesn’t matter, Sael of Harleh? Not even if it costs the lives of all your people and the people of Worlen as well?”

Sael bit back an angry response. After what had happened to the temple in Worlen, he had no doubt she could be that cruel. Had he really worshipped the Stronni just a few weeks ago, worshipped
her
?

Imen reached out a tentative hand and slid her fingers through the air as if stroking the surface of a glass wall. “You can’t possibly be powerful enough to generate this barrier. Is it possible…?”