Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy) (76 page)

The fires on the beach multiplied as the island’s
residents continued their preparations. Kyrus tried to guess how many there
were among them but gave up as there were too many obscured in the darkness
where the fires did not reach. But the numerous fires were enough that he could
begin to make out the plant life that lived not far from the beach. There were
brilliant greens of leaf and bush, tall trees that had no leaves at all until
very near the top, and little specks of color that must have been flowers, all
oranges and reds and yellows.

Off to the port side of the boat they passed a
sea-worn rock, jutting from the water. Their guides had veered them around it.
Kyrus paid a bit more attention to the surrounding waters after that and
noticed many more rocks not far above the surface.

It would be suicide to pilot these waters blindly
without guides. Well, aside from the water being warm and us being so close to
shore
, Kyrus corrected himself.

Aside from the late hour and not wishing to sleep wet,
it was tempting to swim the waters. Kyrus dragged a hand in the water, feeling
the warmth and wondering what creatures might lurk beneath the surface.

Drat!

Kyrus had once again forgotten and let his vision slip
back solely into the light. It was a hard habit to get into—easier aboard ship
where his paranoia lent him focus—and the beauty of the night landscape had
lulled him into a reverie of light without aether. He willed his vision into
the mixed view he wanted to maintain, and looked down again.

Below the boats, the waters teemed with life. Schools
of fish abounded, hundreds of schools, and thousands, perhaps millions of fish!
There was a wall of life not far beneath them; it ran in a circle about the
island, as far as he could see into the aether. It could only have been the
reef. He did not know the draft of the
Free Trader
, but it could not
possibly have made it over the reef without running aground.

Kyrus’s musings were again interrupted when the drums
began, followed by chanting in a language he did not understand. There was a
five-beat pattern with syncopation—
dum dum da-dum dum
—and accompaniment
by a clacking of wood on wood. The words did not change much. If it was a song,
it seemed only to have perhaps two verses, but it sounded festive, and there
were at least a hundred among the chanters, if not more.

“They know how to welcome visitors here,” Denrik spoke
quietly to Kyrus.

Kyrus had forgotten about his reservations about
Captain Zayne, caught up in the wonder and mystery of this little island and
its inhabitants.

Could it be that this place is all that he promised?
Kyrus wondered.

*
* * * * * * *

The party that first greeted them as they pulled the
boat ashore was led by a trio of older men. Two had the look of the island’s
natives, lean with bronzed skin; smooth, soft features and round faces, and
dark black hair, which they wore close-cropped. They wore nothing but
loincloths and trinkets, and their bodies bore numerous tattoos—plainer in
style and cruder in form than the ones he had seen in Marker’s Point, but he
had seen their like among the crew. The third was a grey-bearded northerner,
Acardian by the look of him, dressed like the Denku: loincloth, tattoos and all.

One of the Denku spoke at length in his own language,
and the Acardian translated: “Welcome back, sir. Kappi wishes to welcome the
Zayne ship and its crew. His fishermen did not recognize your ship, but he is
pleasantly surprised to find it is you.”

The one who must have been Kappi spoke again. “He says
the feast will begin shortly, once the hunters return. You and your men will
share drinks and songs. They may lie with any women who will have them but
warns that they must behave themselves,” the Acardian translated.

“It will not be like last time,” Denrik assured him.
“Rathbone was hung years ago and is no longer among my crew. Tell Kappi that it
is a pleasure as always, and we have much to trade and much to discuss.” To the
rest of his men, he ordered, “And you lot, bring the chest ashore and have it
here.”

Kyrus had not seen the small chest loaded aboard the
longboat. It had been covered with a canvas tarp to protect against the sea
spray and had not attracted his notice.

On the other hand, the natives most certainly had
caught Kyrus’s notice. The garb of the men that met them was typical of the
Denku, man and woman alike. Not a one of them wore the clothes he would
consider adequate to be modestly asleep in his own bed. The women were of all
ages, but the old crones and mothers did not catch his eye; it was the younger
maids. Whether primitive or not, there was something to a diet of fish and
hunted game, combined with an active life, that seemed quite agreeable to the
figure. Kyrus had been to the museums of Scar Harbor and Golis, and had seen
the works of Dard the Lesser and Hallay Fellbird—and the Denku women looked
much like those statues in form, if not about the face. He had never seen so
much of his beloved Abbiley as he now saw of these strange women.

After the official greeting, the Denku pressed forward
to greet the newcomers themselves. There were smiles and indecipherable
greetings in the Denku tongue. Two comely young women took Kyrus in arm and
escorted him toward the fires. Tattooing seemed to be mostly for the menfolk,
but the women had decoration of their own. The younger ones especially seemed
to like to dye their hair fanciful colors. The one who had hold of his right
arm had brightly colored green hair, which might have been shoulder length had
it not been teased out in every direction. She wore a double-stranded necklace
of seashells about her neck and a needle through the top of one ear. The one on
his left arm was scarlet haired—the red of ripe apples, not the more natural
strawberry blonde of Juliana’s—and wore hers in four braids, two pulled forward
over each shoulder. This one wore no necklace, but the clatter of beads as she
walked made him guess that perhaps her loincloth was naught but stranded
beads—Kyrus pointedly did not look.

Kyrus was finding it hard to look anywhere at all on
the island without embarrassment. He was a head taller than either of his
escorts, so even looking down at their faces—which smiled up guilelessly each
time they noticed his attention—was an invitation to blush as he saw too much
else. The two who had claimed him took him off to a long bench at the sand’s
edge, made from a felled tree and carved flat and made smooth on the top
surface. They waded through a throng of cheerful Denku on the way there, smiling
at him, touching him, offering greetings or blessings. It was hard to tell
which, since Kyrus could barely distinguish words among their speech, let alone
put meaning to them.

Once they were seated, the girls began fussing over
him. He was touched and felt, and they talked past him to each other
considerably. They pressed close against him on either side and managed to
arrange it such that each of his arms encircled one of them. Kyrus hardly knew
how to resist—and was beginning to wonder why it was occurring to him to try—as
he could hardly touch anyplace on them in any modesty to push them away. Drinks
were brought around in bowls not much smaller than dinner plates. The two
girls, whose hands were free when they chose them to be, held the bowl to Kyrus’s
lips so that he did not need to release them from his embrace to drink. The
liquid was slightly thick, not quite a syrup, and sweet, with just a hint of
alcohol to it. It was delicious, some sort of fermented melon if he had to
guess, and the three of them shared it.

Kyrus saw others from the crew come to join the
revelry, but he paid them little mind. His attention was being drawn to the
area immediately beneath each of his arms by the attentions of the two young
lasses who seemed intent on keeping it all for themselves. When the feasting
started, they took spits of the meat of some furry animal the hunters had
killed—halfway between a bear and a badger—and fish, as well as fruits from the
island. As with the drink, they held the spit up for him as well, feeding him
like a Takalish prince.

As the night wore on, the music played and drunken men
and women danced about the fires. Drinks were replaced when they were emptied,
and spits of meat came regularly. At some point, Kyrus had his tunic
confiscated—he was a bit fuzzy on the “how,” but figured out the “who” easily
enough—and the two girls curled more closely against him, their warmth
contrasting with the pleasantly cool night breeze on his back. The girl to his
left had marveled at his tattoo, tracing it with her fingers and kissing it. It
seemed like they thought it was a symbol of status, or perhaps his prowess as a
warrior.

Well, perhaps it is, at that.

Kyrus felt guilty somewhere in his heart. He longed
for home, but the night was surreal and dreamlike, in a way his dreams never
were. It seemed magical, but not in the way that he was growing to understand
magic. Kyrus allowed the revelry to sweep him up and away, like a leaf borne on
the wind. He was not Brannis, nor were these girls betrothed of anyone he had
ever met.

Chapter 36 - A Feast for Heroes

The repairs and cleanup began at dawn. The townsfolk
were out in numbers, clearing the bodies from the streets and carting off
debris from the wreckage of buildings or the wall. The combatants of the night
before were allowed to sleep to noontime, but all other able-bodied folk were
at work by the duke’s orders. Brannis had ignored his privilege of a late
slumber and was seeing to the organization of the repair and recovery efforts.

He had slept fitfully, with his broken arm set by
aether construct to prevent it from breaking any worse, but Caldrax’s handiwork
had done nothing for the pain of the break, or any of the other lesser hurts
Brannis had suffered when his armor’s aether had failed.

Brannis was not sure what to do about Jinzan. Only
Juliana had heard what befell in the chamber of the Obelisk of Gehlen and still
lived. She had heard Brannis call to him by name, and not the name he was known
by in Veydrus. She had also heard Jinzan call him by Kyrus’s name. Then again,
she had hit the floor solidly when he tackled her. Perhaps she would not even
remember such a mincing detail as two unfamiliar names traded just before a
blow to the head.

Should I bother trying to explain it away, just in
case? Maybe if I do not bring it up, she will let it pass, or forget about it
in the face of all else that has befallen.

“Marshal Brannis, a word,” came a shout from down the
hall, bearing the duke’s voice.

Brannis had been giving orders to a few others of the
knights who could not bear the extra sleep, sending them to begin accounting
for the dead. With the destruction wrought of dragonfire and cannon alike, a
count of skulls would be the best way to determine how many had been lost—by
both sides. While he was less concerned with the families of the goblins, he
wanted to know what strength they had faced, and how many fewer were the goblin
numbers than they had been the previous day.

“Marshal Brannis,” the voice came again as Duke
Pellaton made his way through the throng in the overcity entrance chamber of
the castle. “Finally! I have been looking all over for you. What have you done
to my city? I heard that you were the one who sabotaged the avalanche wall and
brought the Neverthaw Glacier down across the entrance to the undercity and
buried half the overcity in snow and ice! What were you thinking?”

“Go out, do what you can,” Brannis ordered the knights
who had surrounded him, then turned his attention to the duke. “What would you
have had me do, fight them in the undercity, outnumbered twenty to one? The
whole population was down there; I could not just let an army make their way
down unhindered. As it was, too many got through, and we had to let the ogres
loose among the goblins to stop them.”

“That is another thing. My steward tells me that the
ogres are demanding payment. They said the ‘big boss’ said so,” Duke Pellaton
said, his face reddening.

“It has already been taken care of. I had Mennon give
them a few hundred lions and they seemed happy enough with that,” Brannis said.

“That is not the point. They do not get paid. They are
mining animals, nothing more. My family has kept and bred them for winters,”
Duke Pellaton growled, pointing his cane menacingly at Brannis.

“They showed last night that they were more than that.
They fought to defend their homes and their keepers. So pay them a pittance and
make them buy the bread and meat they eat. Give them the same illusion of
freedom as the peasants, and you shall find them just as loyal and useful.

“I might add that it is the same illusion of freedom
that you enjoy, Duke. You have your lands and your wealth, but there is an
angry demon outside dissecting the corpse of a dragon he slew inside the walls
of your city. Any freedom you think you have is at the pleasure of Warlock
Rashan. He treats you better than you treat the ogres, but he could easily show
you how tenuous that freedom really is, show you firsthand how simple it is to
take away,” Brannis said.

“Why do you care for the ogres? They are just dumb
brutes.” Duke Pellaton’s eye narrowed accusingly. “You got some
thing
for ogres, do you?”

“I spent two summers fighting them in the borderlands.
They are fierce warriors. You tamed them and made them dumb. I am not claiming
them to be scholars, but they are cunning enough fighters and have their own
ways, their own language. Your ogres are useless, or at least were until last
night, when they showed they can be trusted.”

Brannis snatched the cane from the old duke with his
good hand and thrust it back at him, jamming it flatly against his chest. The
old duke stumbled backward against a chair and bobbled the cane, which
clattered against the floor.

“If you do not like the manner in which I kept your
people alive, or the manner in which I treat your slaves, take it up with the
warlock,” Brannis barked, drawing stares from all about, as those who had been
attending to other business stopped to watch the confrontation.

“This is my city, you insolent pup! I shall have you—”

Suddenly Brannis had closed the gap and stood face-to-face
with the duke, towering over the older man from a handspan away.

“You shall have me … what?” Brannis asked through
gritted teeth. After all that had transpired the previous night, he was
ill-inclined to suffer threats from the worthless Duke Pellaton and his feigned
outrage. “You forget yourself, Duke. I was sent here to save your city, and I
have. I was not sent here to save your old walls, or keep your ogres docile.
There is a dead dragon outside, and you somehow survived the night. Warlock
Rashan put me in command here, and I have not yet relinquished it, nor yet been
relieved of it. If you insist on interfering with my efforts to put Raynesdark
back in order, you can spend the night in one of your own dungeons. Any appeal
will not take long, since the Imperial Regent is just outside. Fair warning, he
is not so forgiving of fools.”

Brannis was glad that Avalanche was still buried
somewhere under a mountain of ice. Had the clean-up crews retrieved it for him
already, Duke Pellaton’s elder son might have been made duke.

*
* * * * * * *

Iridan listened as best he could, but his attention
wandered at times. The dragon was fascinating, but he’d had a hard night and
had not slept. Rashan poked and carved at the corpse, studying the creature’s
anatomy, marveling at the strength in the scales and the beauty of the dragon
as a whole. Rashan had walked all about the dragon’s body and climbed around on
it, Iridan following dutifully in his wake as the warlock explained his
findings and his methodology to his protégé. Iridan had not looked in a mirror
since the battle and would hardly have recognized the reflection if he had. His
face was ashen, with dark shadows around reddened, heavy-lidded eyes. A fresh
bruise swelled the left side of his face at the cheekbone, and blood crusted at
the corner of his mouth and left eye from the force of Jinzan’s spell, even
though Iridan’s shield had saved his life from the blast.

“Look at this. I can bend it just a bit but cannot
break it or keep it from springing back to shape, and I am truly trying,”
Rashan said, flexing one of the dragon’s scales between his hands.

The scale in question was the size of a supper plate,
one of the larger scales on the dragon’s body—they ranged down to tiny scales
the size of a thumbnail. The warlock handed the scale to Iridan to see for
himself, and Iridan gamely tried to bend it, finding it as inflexible as steel,
though it felt like glass or polished stone in his hands.

“Yes. Sturdy,” Iridan muttered sleepily, handing it
back.

Warlock Rashan had pried it loose from the dragon’s
back with some difficulty, an indication of how well it was attached, to have
put the demon to some trouble over it. Iridan was just noticing that it was
late morning, as the sun was coming up over the mountaintops. Raynesdark saw
little of the sun even in the warm months, but as the Solstice holiday
approached, it was lucky to have a few hours of light a day, between the
shortened days and the sheltering mountains to the east.

Townsfolk had begun gathering at the base of the
fallen glacier, tradesmen by the look of them. They were dressed for warmth in
the frigid morning air, but Iridan identified them by their tools. There were
blacksmiths with tongs and hammers, standing out from their peers by their bulk
as well. He saw butchers, with meat hooks and cleavers, a couple even carrying
saws along with their more commonly seen tools. The duke’s apothecary was there
with his apprentices, pulling a hand cart filled with empty vials, flasks, and
jars. Drovers came in numbers, with oxcarts, mostly empty, some filled with
crates and sacks. Other tradesmen Iridan could not name, but he knew that they
had some part in Rashan’s current undertaking: disassembling the dragon.

It was to be gruesome work, but Rashan had emphasized
just how rare a thing a dragon kill was, and how valuable every piece of it.
The scales and bones were stronger than steel and took runes as readily as a
mop took water. The leather was strong and supple even before any curing, and
was impervious to fire. Less was known of the uses of the dragon’s fluids, but
Rashan wanted none wasted that could otherwise be preserved, that they might
find what uses they held.

The ground at the edge of the glacier was wet, and
further away steamed lightly. The fires of the forges below still heated the
overcity and the snow was melting, albeit at a rate which would not clear the
hilltop-sized mount of snow before springtime. The more adventurous of the
tradesmen did not just stand in the great puddle waiting for instruction but came
up onto the snow and approached the dragon.

“Welcome, people of Raynesdark,” Rashan addressed
them, tearing his attention away from the fascinating specimen upon which he
stood.

The warlock placed one foot upon the dragon’s head,
posing as a prize hunter might atop a kill—and no monohorn or gelnon looked so
impressive beneath a hunter’s boot as the dragon who called herself Jadefire
looked beneath Rashan’s.

“Last night was a night of war and suffering and loss,
but today is a day for celebrating those who yet live, and the mighty deeds
they have wrought. This dragon brought forth her goblin minions against us, and
the Kadrin people have made her pay for her folly. Her minions are slaughtered
in the fields before the city, at the wall, and in the streets of Raynesdark.
Beneath the Neverthaw lie countless others. Yet more lie dead in the streets of
the undercity, given no quarter or mercy by Raynesdark’s miners,” Rashan said,
rather diplomatically referring to the ogres, declining to call them either slaves
or citizens. Brannis’s actions the previous night had cast their status into
question.

“As for you, good folks, you will be helping us take
our trophy. For while goblins sell their lives cheaply in battle, dragons are
more cautious creatures, and more dangerous. To my knowledge, there have been
no slayings of dragons in at least six hundred summers. You look upon a
spectacle none of your ancestors has seen in thirty generations, if they were
even so lucky. We will harvest and put to use every part of this dragon save
for one. The skull will remain just where it is now, allowing for the melting
of a few feet of snow beneath it. The area around will be cleared and a
monument erected, celebrating the defeat of Nihaxtukali.” The draconic word
sounded odd with Rashan’s traditional pronunciation, amid all the Kadrin words
about it. “Do not fear, I will show the stonemasons how to spell it,” the
warlock joked, smiling. There were a few chuckles among the tradesmen, mostly
out of politeness.

The tradesmen had been informed of who Rashan Solaran
was, and in a few cases had it explained to them what a warlock was, as there
had not been one within the lifetime of anyone in the city. They were a bit
uneasy around him in person as he directed them about the butchering and
harvesting of the dragon. There was a way he walked, moved, and spoke, that
unnerved folks. His movements were swift and sure, his head snapped around
quickly when he changed focus, his eyes seemed to meet the gaze of each man and
woman in the crowd as he spoke to the assembly, all from a single glance.
Sorcerers were not so unusual a sight among the folk of Raynesdark, but they
were not used to the pent up energy they saw in the warlock. Their own
sorcerers were aloof, bookish sorts, prone to long periods indoors and little
real work. Rashan directed the tradesmen the way a harbormaster oversees a
port—at the center of all, checking on all he saw and demanding reports of all
he did not.

Iridan had no tasks assigned him. He was present to
watch and learn but seemed near the point of falling asleep on his feet. When
he quietly slipped away, Rashan made sure to overlook his absence. While
Iridan’s contributions to the battle has been less than he had hoped, he had
shown promise.

But Iridan had been the one assigned to stop the
Megrenn sorcerer, and that failing was likely to prove quite costly someday.
The Staff of Gehlen was an object whose powers few were familiar with. Rashan
was quite familiar with them. He wanted no part of facing one who wielded it.

Rashan busied himself demonstrating to the fifth group
of would-be dragon-skinners the technique he had found that removed the scales
from the hide most quickly. All men who used blades were carrying whetstones
and cloths as well. The blades dulled quickly against the resilient dragon
hide. The warlock had considered runing a few blades to speed the work but
decided that his time was better spent in organization.