Prelude to Fire: Parts 1 and 2 (16 page)

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I
f you enjoyed
the Cloud Warrior Saga, check out the first novel set in a new series:
The Dark Ability
.

Exiled by his family. Claimed by thieves. Could his dark ability be the key to his salvation?

Rsiran is a disappointment to his family, gifted with the ability to Slide. It is a dark magic, one where he can transport himself wherever he wants, but using it will only turn him into the thief his father fears.

Forbidden from Sliding, he’s apprenticed under his father as a blacksmith where lorcith, a rare, precious metal with arcane properties, calls to him, seducing him into forming forbidden blades. When discovered, he’s banished, sentenced indefinitely to the mines of Ilphaesn Mountain.

Though Rsiran tries to serve obediently, to learn to control the call of lorcith as his father demands, when his life is threatened in the darkness of the mines, he finds himself Sliding back to Elaeavn where he finds a black market for his blades - and a new family of thieves.

There someone far more powerful than him discovers what he can do and intends to use him. He doesn’t want to be a pawn in anyone’s ambitions; all he ever wanted was a family. But the darkness inside him cannot be ignored - and he’s already embroiled in an ancient struggle that only he may be able to end.

L
acertin sat
with his hands clasped together, head bowed to his knees and his back aching, trying to ignore the pain burning through him. Fire raged against him, demanding control that he once would have believed impossible. It took every bit of his strength to ignore the flames. Only, he couldn’t ignore it, not entirely, not with the way it trailed along his skin, leaving his flesh scalded, as if Incendin thought to strip every last part that was him away.

It was a test, but one that he no longer cared whether he would pass.

What did it matter if he survived if he was a shell of the person who had come to Incendin?

The fire raged on for minutes or hours. Time no longer had the same meaning, no longer had
any
meaning, if ever it did. The only thing he focused on was surviving.

If he didn’t, he would never learn what happened to his king.

But did that matter? If he couldn’t think, if he barely survived, what did it matter if he ever learned what happened to Ilton?

Eventually, the pain burning through him eased. Lacertin didn’t allow himself to hope that it might be over. Pain had eased before, but it had always returned. Questions came later, always after, and his answers never seemed to satisfy his tormentors. He kept his answers simple: he had come to Incendin to learn fire, but that had not been enough.

They wanted the truth, but the truth meant he would die. Until he knew what happened to Ilton, until he knew the depths of the betrayal, and understood how he had been poisoned, he refused to give up. For Ilton—and Ilianna—he would fight.

Only, he wondered how much longer he
could
fight.

Each day hurt more than the one before. When he thought Incendin couldn’t hurt him any more than they had, another surge of pain came as they tried to break him.

Lacertin hadn’t broken, not that he knew, but what had he cried out when the pain became too intense? What had he said then?

Maybe nothing, or maybe he’d revealed the reason that he’d come to these blasted lands, a place the Great Mother forgot.

A door scraped open. Lacertin refused to look up, not wanting to look his tormentors in the eyes.

“You sit quietly.” The voice was soft but had a harsh undercurrent to it, as if burned like everything else in Incendin. “All day you are tested, and you say nothing. Have you shared all that you know?”

Nothing. That provided some relief. He had feared that he might have said something he did not want to share, revealed his reason for coming, or perhaps let on who he was. So far, he had managed to keep even that quiet.

The person laughed softly. “You still choose to fight rather than submit. That is unfortunate. You have much skill in fire, that is clear, or you would not have survived this long. There is much we could teach.”

He looked up then, but still said nothing.

The woman standing across from him had short dark hair and intense eyes that seemed to burn with a light all their own. Like most within Incendin, especially the shapers that he’d seen—and there was no question that this woman was a shaper—she wore a long maroon cloak that hung from one shoulder, leaving the other bare. In some ways, he would call her beautiful.

“When you wish to submit, then we will talk of terms.”

She took a step back and faded from his view.

Fire burned through him again, surging with renewed intensity. It was as if the fire she shaped crawled along his skin, working beneath it and reaching into his blood.

Lacertin screamed, unable to contain it.

He did not know how long it lasted this time.

Already, he’d been here for days upon days, months that had blended into an endless sea of pain. Had he known another way, he would have fought, but fighting would only lead to his death. Of all the truths that came from Incendin, that was the most common. Fight and you die. Submit… offer oneself to fire… and there was a chance.

Lacertin submitted, but still that wasn’t enough.

The pain eased again, briefly, barely enough for him to take a breath, and the door scraped again. The woman appeared before him, pacing as she did. “Is there nothing else?”

Lacertin worked his tongue along the inside of his dry mouth. Water was scarce in Incendin and they provided him with only enough to stay alive, never enough to more than wet his mouth. “There is nothing.” The words came out sounding as harsh in his ears as her voice was.

She stopped pacing. This close, he could feel the heat radiating off her. Few fire shapers in the kingdoms burned with such heat to maintain that level of control. For her to have such heat, and for it to simmer from her, told him as much about her control as anything. But then, he had felt the way her shaping attacked him.

As much as he hated it, he had learned from his torment. The shapings used on him had been more complex than any he would have attempted at the university. Not only in the way they were used against him, but also in the strength and control that he’d sensed.

Fire had always come easily to him. Growing up in Nara, lands as similar to Incendin as were found in the kingdoms, he was aware of fire as a real force, one that he could practically feel within him. His brother Chasn had crossed the waste, choosing to come to Incendin to learn, but Lacertin had remained loyal to the kingdoms.

Always loyal.

That was why he was here now.

He tried to push back awareness of how he would be viewed in the kingdoms. It didn’t matter so long as he discovered what happened to Ilton. He could explain himself then and could demonstrate his loyalty and somehow convince Althem that he hadn’t been responsible for what happened to Ilianna.

More than Althem, it was Theondar who he would have to convince. He remembered the hurt look in his eyes when he’d seen Lacertin in the king’s chamber, the accusation plain, believing—
knowing
—that Lacertin was to blame for what happened to Ilianna.

And now that she was gone, it no longer mattered that he guarded her secret. With her passing, the ability to shape no longer impacted succession. He could have remained in the kingdoms, could have worked within the borders to find answers to what happened to Ilton, but instead he had risked everything by coming to Incendin, thinking that he alone could learn the secret of how Ilton had been poisoned.

How foolish was that?

But how could he ignore the last request of his king? After all the years he’d served, Lacertin knew that he could not.

The fire shaper watched him, almost as if knowing his thoughts.

Lacertin blinked. How much had he been saying aloud?

Hopefully none. If he had, then Incendin would know why he’d come, and there would be no way for him to find what he needed.

“Tell me,” she said, leaning close enough for him to feel the heat of her breath that smelled almost of char and ash, as if her shaping burned within her throat, “how is it that you shape fire as strongly as you do?”

“I haven’t.”

She straightened her back and placed her hands on her hips. “You haven’t, but you would not have managed to withstand the shaping used on you if you could only sense. Tell me, stranger of the kingdoms, why is it that you have come to the Sunlands if you already know how to shape fire?”

Lacertin swallowed, licking his lips to try and add moisture into them, but they were dry and flaking, as if he’d stayed too long in the sun rather than within the darkness of this place. Once, he would have thought it impossible to come to the Fire Fortress, but he’d been here long enough that it no longer impressed him, even if he only saw this one room. It had been… Days? Weeks? Months? …since he’d seen the sun.

“I would learn what you can teach,” he said.

She leaned close to him again and sniffed. “You still hold back. When you submit, you can learn.”

Lacertin tensed, ready for the suddenness of the pain to return. Each time she told him to submit so that he could learn, the pain returned within moments.

But this time, it didn’t.

He brought his knees up, waiting for her to attack, but it never came.

Silence surrounded him. And darkness. With her went the brightness of the lantern light. He could shape fire into existence, but after what he’d been through, he didn’t want to use fire, and barely wanted to know fire if he could avoid it.

What he wouldn’t give for water.

The thought brought no little amusement to him. For so long, he’d fought the need to understand water, using it only as a larger part of other shapings. He’d managed to keep a friend alive with water, but not much else.

Here, in Incendin, it felt as if water were useless, though he knew the Fire Fortress was on the edge of the ocean. Surrounded by these strange walls, shaped in ways that the kingdoms’ shapers could learn from, water was separated from him as surely as if it never existed. All he could sense, all he could detect, was fire. Even earth, and he didn’t know how that would be possible. Earth was all around him, in the black stone of the walls, to the hard rock he sat on, but he sensed nothing of it.

Other than fire, only wind tickled at his senses, and that was weak, so faint that he could barely pull at it if he wanted. And when he did, wind burned, as if touched by fire.

What had he been thinking?

He could have stayed in the kingdoms, could have remained, and worked
with
Theondar to find the answer to what happened with Ilton. It might take some time to convince him that he hadn’t intentionally violated the king’s final rest, and perhaps even longer to convince him that he’d had nothing to do with Ilianna’s death, but no longer was it the case that he didn’t have friends in Ethea.

He’d spent his entire adult life serving the king and he had never found time to make friends. That was how he had served as well as he had, but Lacertin no longer could deny how lonely an existence that had been. What bitter irony that it took him fleeing from the kingdoms to discover that he had more friends than he realized.

As he often did when his thoughts turned dark, he wondered about Jayna. He tried not to think of her, especially knowing the hurt that she’d shown him, but he’d brought her into more than she deserved. Did Wallyn continue to teach her, or had the fact that Lacertin used her to attempt a healing on the princess destroyed her future? Bad enough that so many others had died, but he couldn’t stomach the possibility that he was the reason that something happened to Jayna.

And Veran. Without Veran, Lacertin doubted that he would have escaped the kingdoms. Perhaps he might have managed to reach the barrier, but he would have needed to fight his way across, something that he hadn’t been willing to do.

Now he was here.

Crossing the waste had been harder than he realized, and he’d been able to shape his way across. What must it be like for those who couldn’t shape, who had to walk, either through the waste or around it?

Even shaping had been dangerous. He hadn’t found any water and had approached the Fire Fortress slowly, avoiding any of the known Incendin cities. Then there were those unknown, places where he hadn’t realized life existed. When he saw signs of them, he made a point of changing directions, turning his shaping away.

And then he had waited.

He had no other plan, nothing but a desire to reach Incendin, to find a way to get far enough inside that he could begin to understand what they had done to Ilton, and hopefully find out who they had placed within Ethea that would have been able to administer the poison. That was his entire plan.

So far, it had not gone well.

Sitting as he was, he didn’t notice at first that he was without pain.

How long had it been since he had gone more than moments without pain? Even when he attempted to sleep, he was often awakened by pain burning through him. He had learned to ignore the minor sensations, those where he felt nothing more than a shifting sense of heat. At first, that had been enough to keep him awake, always fearing what would come next, but he’d discovered that he could ignore fire that burned like that unless it really started to work on him, attempting to boil his blood. That agony was a difficult one to ignore.

Lacertin stood. From all the time confined to the cell, his legs were weak and shaky. He leaned on the wall for support, noting the heat but able to ignore the scalding heat pressing from the stone into his palm. That had not always been the case. It was almost as if the fortress itself burned, rather than only the flames atop it giving its name.

No sounds came from within the cell. Nothing crawled along outside the cell. There was only the darkness and the heat.

He pulled on wind, shaping it softly and trying to peel the heat out of it, but the wind resisted, almost as if it were tied to fire. In these lands, he suspected that might be possible.

Why had the attacks on him eased?

Lacertin was left with only questions, hating the fact that he didn’t know.

Worse, the attacks could return at any moment.

Maybe that was the real torture, forcing him to know that he was always in danger of another attack.

Lacertin paced, tracing his hand along the wall as he did, waiting for the recurrence of pain. It never came as he expected.