Fire Heart (The Titans: Book One) (74 page)

And then she faded away, and Will knew no more.

~

“I fear we have made a terrible mistake,” Serah said. She sat with Feothon and Leyra at a secluded table in the main hall, and her words came out in a hushed whisper. The majority of the hall's inhabitants had left for the peace and quiet of their own quarters long ago, and now only a token population of hard-drinking Northmen and eerily silent Eastlanders remained. The usual din had retreated to a more manageable background roar, and it allowed the Titans to converse in relative privacy.

“Explain,” Feothon said shortly. His mood since Borbos' death and Will's rampage had deteriorated to a point Serah had never seen, but she made no mention of it. Asper seemed to be the only thing keeping Feothon from descending into complete darkness, and she sat next to him with her head on his shoulder and her hands folded in his.

Serah looked pointedly at Asper, and then back to Feothon. When the Forest Lord nodded for her to continue, Serah said, “We should have told Clare about her true nature from the very beginning.”

“She is pulling away from Will,” Leyra said softly, and Serah nodded. “What happens if she pushes him away too much? Could it sever their bond?”

“I do not know,” Serah said, her voice shaking slightly, “but that could very well be the case, no?”

“An interesting thing to see,” Feothon said dully. “I wonder if it would turn her mortal.”

All three women stared at him in shock. “What?” Serah asked, unsure of what she had just heard.

“Perhaps it would give her a chance at a normal life,” Feothon continued. He was no longer looking at any of them, and as he stared blankly at the worn wood of the table Serah was struck by how old he suddenly appeared. “I've often wished for one, myself. Perhaps it would be for the best.”

“They could also die,” Serah hissed angrily. “Both of them. What happens then? If Clare's half of Koutoum's soul abandons Will's, will they ever rejoin? It could
kill
Koutoum for all we know. And then the traitors will have won.”

Feothon sighed. “And strangely,” he said as though to himself, “I find myself no longer caring.”

“What?” Asper cried, speaking for the first time. “You are the god of life! How can you simply stop
caring?
”

“Quite easily,” Feothon answered emotionlessly.

Asper stood abruptly, snatching her hands away from him as though burned. “You are not the man I love,” she whispered. “You are...something else. Something
wrong
. You may have given up on the world, on me, on
this,
” her hand went to her pregnant belly, “but I never will.”

Feothon stared at her, and suddenly a new sheen washed away the clouds in his eyes. “I...I apologize,” he said softly, his gaze falling to the table, and he blinked slowly and shook his head. “I have been a fool. I do not know what came over me. Forgive me.”

Asper, though, seemed unconvinced. She slowly took her seat once more, but did not return her hands to Feothon's.

“We are all suffering right now,” Leyra said. “Unfortunately that is a burden we are forced to bear.”

“It grows more difficult with age,” Feothon answered evenly, “but you are right. Again, my apologies.”

“So what do we do?” Serah asked, returning them to the matter at hand. “Should we tell them?”

“It may be the only way,” Leyra agreed. “We must do it quickly, though, before it is too late. Where is she?”

“No,” Asper said suddenly, and Serah looked at her in surprise.

“No?”

“No,” Asper repeated. “You cannot tell them.”

Feothon gave her a strange look. “And why not?”

Asper shrugged, suddenly self-conscious under the eyes of the gods. “Because...love is something that cannot be forced. If you tell her...she may fight their bond, and the love will never be real. In the end, it could be the same as if she simply pushed him away. In fact, she may very well do just that.”

Silence settled over the Titans as they pondered her words. The white noise of the hall seemed to grow louder as their own quiescence drew on. Finally, Feothon nodded. “I believe you are right,” he said, and then he laughed softly. “Thank the Void for the minds of humans.”

Asper glanced at him briefly with an unreadable expression but said nothing. Leyra nodded her assent, and then leaned back in her chair. Serah was the last to respond, but in the end she nodded slowly. “A wise decision,” she murmured.

She almost said more. Her lips parted, but halfway down the path to speech she faltered, twitching as though stung. “What...” she whispered. Something was amiss, and as soon as that realization hit her she closed her physical eyes and opened her eyes in the wind.

She cast about to and fro—Falcos first, but no, the Fallen had not struck at her city. Everything was as it should be. She dimly heard Feothon ask her something, but ignored him. She extended her consciousness to Horoth then, fearing that they had been followed.

But again, there was no sign of either the traitors or their forces. She saw Will standing among the stone gardens, staring straight ahead and unmoving. She almost went on, but something stopped her, and she watched with a growing sense of horror as Will's body seemed to lose all rigidity. He crumpled to
the ground, falling flat on his back in the snow. His eyes were still open, but they were not his own—where before there had been bright, icy blue, there was now only swirling darkness.

The darkness of Insanity.

“Oh, spirits,” Serah whispered. “Oh, gods.”

For days the fires burned, licking at the air with wicked tongues, hungry for sustenance that would never be enough to fill them. What buildings remained amid the chaos were little more than blackened shells, their timbers crumbling and giving way one by one in great flurries of glowing sparks as the flames ate them away.

A handful of opportunistic looters had trickled in from the hills in search of riches; they had found only an impassable wall of heat and death, and the stench of burning things. Spaertos was long gone; nothing of its former glory remained, and what few valuable trinkets were left were buried so deeply inside the inferno that to seek them out would mean a slow and painful end. Soon these treasures would be gone, too, leaving behind only a blackened crater where once had stood a proud city.

The looters had seen this, and then left as quickly as they had come.

Now, finally, after four days of fury, the flames were beginning to die away. And near the cliffs, where once had stood the massive stone barracks that had acted as both watchtower and dungeon, there now stood a man. The ground at his feet was dead, the life burned completely out of it; nothing would grow there for many, many years.

He was garbed entirely in black, and though the air still wavered with the heat of a forge he seemed unaffected by it. A hooded cloak covered his body save for a glimpse of his boots and a shock of pale white skin around his mouth. His lips were curved ever so slightly in something resembling the beginnings of a frown, and as he passed his slow gaze around the destruction that surrounded him the frown seemed to deepen, though it might have been a trick of the light.

He stood at the exact epicenter of the explosion, the first one triggered by Will's rage. A circle of soot radiated out from around him, and the buildings that had once stood to his right and left had been felled as though by a strong wind. Tiny motes of ash fluttered down about him like grey butterflies, occasionally crumbling upon the threads of his cloak. The sunset behind him lent an angry orange glow to the scene, bathing the ruined city in colors that bore an unnerving resemblance to the flames that had ravaged it only days before.

Time passed, and yet the man did not move from where he stood. He seemed to be waiting for something.

And then, when the last glowing sliver of the sun sank below the horizon and the clouds turned a deep, bruised purple, he went slowly to one knee and extended a single gloved hand to the soot at his feet. He gently touched the tip of his forefinger to the ground, drawing a tiny, endless circle in the
filth
. Ash stained the end of his glove, but he seemed not to care. Somewhere in front of him a broken, charred pillar, the only thing left standing in the wake of Will's fury, crumbled with a squealing crackle of breaking carbon. Flames leaped with renewed vigor as it collapsed in on itself, and for a split instant the Dark Man's eyes gleamed like a cat's, their violet depths reflecting none of the fire's color but instead seeming to cast their own light. There were no whites in his eyes—only darkness. The flames soon died back down, plunging his pale face back into shadow.

H
e held his pose, unmoving except for the tiny swirling path his fingertip drew in the soot, until the sky melded into deep blue and the first, brightest star appeared overhead.

And as though sparked by that one small change, a tendril of violet light crept tentatively from beneath his cloak, curling around his body like a serpent. Soon it was joined by another, and then another still until there were dozens of them—hundreds—a tempest of violet
power
that erupted from the man's body, wreathing him in otherworldly energy
that twisted high into the air like a whirlwind of light. There were images inside the glowing storm, drifting in toward the man on curling mists from every corner of the city. They were people, crying and laughing and screaming and living. There were men and women, children and infants, the young and the old all joining together at the nexus where the man knelt amid the chaos. And when they touched him, they disappeared, fading away like so much smoke.

More stars began to dot the heavens, painting the growing darkness with countless points of silver light until the sun's glow faded away completely, leaving behind an ebony sea that seemed somehow fuller than any night before. Even the thick clouds of smoke that choked the skies could not smother the evening's glory, and it seemed to dissipate wherever the swirling vortex touched it.

Soon the tempest began to fade away, twisting and curling in on itself as it slithered back inside the shadowy reaches of the Dark Man's cloak until it disappeared without a trace. He stood a moment later and lightly dusted his hands together. His lips were no longer frowning, but had curved upward in the barest hint of a smile.

“Willyem Blackmane,” he whispered slowly, his mouth forming around the words as though trying them for the first time. His voice was soft and subdued—the voice of a man who was used to listening rather than talking. The wind picked up for a moment, gusting in from the sea and battering his cloak so that it whipped around his frame, but he seemed not to notice. He cocked his head to the side and worked his jaw, letting his tongue dart out to moisten his lips. “Willyem Blackmane.”

Another figure appeared then, striding from the shadows between the ruined buildings to the Dark Man's left. This new figure was, if at all possible, even paler than the first. His suit of fine gray cloth was both richer and more modern than his counterpart's, and the skeletal hands that protruded from his sleeves fidgeted constantly, his thumbs drawing slow, unending circles around the undersides of his fingers. He had not a single strand of hair, nor ears or a nose, leaving nothing but a lipless mouth and unnaturally smooth skin to contrast with the sickly, pale red of his eyes.

“Willyem Blackmane,” he said, echoing the Dark Man in a breathy voice. He sounded exhausted, as though he had just finished sprinting to Spaertos from Avalone.

The Dark Man turned slightly toward the new arrival. “He did this,” he murmured. “Quite the display. Though not, perhaps, as incredible as your escape. I am most curious as to how you followed me.”

“We are not without our tricks, my lord,” the Pale Man wheezed, his thumbs moving faster around the pads of his fingers. “I might inquire after the circumstances of your own appearance here.”

“It would be wise indeed if you did not,” the Dark Man said icily, and the Pale Man bowed his head in respect. After a moment the Dark Man growled, “Why are you here? I saw to your bindings myself. Escape should have been impossible.”

“I believe we already began this discussion once,” the other breathed. “It ended with you telling me to hold my tongue. Or do you not remember?”

“Answer me.”

“I followed you to offer my services,” the Pale Man replied, but the Dark Man's frown only deepened. “None of us is safe anymore. I will be their guide when they reach that point of your plan.”

“Their guide,” the Dark Man said dubiously. “You believe that I would allow you to be their guide after everything you have done?”

The Pale Man's lips curved into a smile, the skin around the corners of his mouth crinkling like paper. “That was so very long ago, my lord,” he wheezed. “And there is no other who knows the wastes as I do. I beg you to allow me to perform this one small service. I seek only forgiveness for my crimes.”

“You seek to save yourself. Do not lie to me, wretch.”

The Pale Man's smile broadened. “And yet, perhaps if I perform admirably, my lord will see fit to reward me with some small measure of redemption.”

“There is no redemption for your crimes,” the Dark Man said, taking a slow, threatening step toward the other, who shrank back involuntarily. “It seems that luck, however, is on your side. I have already taxed myself to the brink. There is little more I can do for now. Guide them, and you will be free.”

The Pale Man spread his arms wide and gave what he must have thought was a radiant smile. “Thank you, my lord,” he said, “I will not dis—”

In a flash the Dark Man had closed the distance between them and curled his fingers around the other man's throat. The movement was so fast that it seemed he had not, in fact, moved at all, and it took
the Pale Man a moment to realize what had happened before his eyes widened in shock and his fingers came up to scrabble at the black glove wrapped around his neck.

“If you do,” the Dark Man snarled through clenched teeth, “if you betray me, then I swear to you I will make your pain the stuff of legend. You will suffer an eternity of torment, and you will
never
escape me again.” He released his hold and took a step back, his hand going momentarily to clutch at his chest, and he winced as though in pain. The Pale Man crumpled to the ground, however, and did not see, only lifting his gaze once the Dark Man had composed himself.

“Remember,” the Dark Man said, holding the other's terrified red eyes with his own, “if you betray me, I will know, and I will come for you.”

And then, with one final sweeping glance around the ruined city, the Dark Man turned and made for the gate, the glowing coals that littered the streets crunching beneath his boots. He did not look back.