Prelude to Fire: Parts 1 and 2 (19 page)

L
acertin sat
in a small room in the Fire Fortress, staring at the wall. A painting of what he suspected was a depiction of Issa hung along the wall, with a face too bright to see and everything beneath shaded.

For some reason, the painting made him think of Ilton.

He shifted the fabric of the clothes the priest arranged for him, his fingers running along the cool, thin fabric. The style was different than what he usually saw with Incendin, and Lacertin had been surprised at how comfortable it was.

Now even his last connection to Ethea was gone.

A part of him wished that he had his sword. Not the one that he’d borrowed from the king in his escape, but the one that had been taken from him when he returned from the border with Veran. Even Ilton’s sword would be a welcome familiarity.

Lacertin still didn’t know what to make of the fact that the torment had not continued. After taking him for clothes, the priest had returned with him to the Fire Fortress and set him up with a room somewhere in the middle. Lacertin tried paying attention to where the priest had brought him, but quickly lost track.

And now he sat here alone.

A pitcher of water rested on a table near him. Since freeing himself from the cell, water had been freely given. Maybe there had been a reason they avoided it while he suffered. With the water, and refreshed now by food and drink, he felt the pull of all the elements on him again. Not only water—which was much easier for him to detect now that he wasn’t as thirsty as he had been—but also with earth, the presence of earth pushing all around him, much more than he would have expected within a palace devoted to fire. Even wind, though the wind that gusted through this part of Incendin was hot and dry, so different than the cool breeze of the kingdoms.

Then there was the sense of fire.

Lacertin noted it all around him. Fire practically burned within the stone, but that shouldn’t be possible. In his time in the university, the earliest lessons taught how each element had a complement and an opposite. Fire and earth countered each other, which was why so few warriors were strong in both. Water was neutral with respect to fire, and wind often augmented it. Lacertin didn’t understand the intricacies of why that would be—such study was best left to the archivists—but had never known fire and stone to be so strongly tied.

Not just the stone had the sense of fire burning throughout it. The air pressed on him with more heat than he expected, so that each breath dried his lungs. In spite of the heat, every hearth danced with flames, almost a demonstration of the power possible from fire shaping.

Lacertin stood, a restless energy burning through him. He had been confined long enough, tormented for months, and now that he was finally free, he didn’t want to stay confined any longer. The priest had made it seem as if he were not a prisoner, though Lacertin didn’t see how that would be possible. He might not be a prisoner in a traditional sense, but he couldn’t leave the Fire Fortress without Incendin permission, and the only person that he’d actually spoken to—truly spoken to—had been the priest, and he didn’t even know his name.

But if he were free to wander the Fire Fortress, would he be able to find out what had happened to Ilton? There might be some evidence that he could discover, at least a clue about where to begin looking for who Incendin might have been working with.

Lacertin pulled the door open.

The hall outside was empty. He hadn’t expected to find anyone there. Truthfully, part of him hadn’t expected to be able to even open the door, thinking that the priest would have locked him in the room. But he had not.

Pulling the thin shirt around him, he stepped into the hall, the slippers on his feet barely making any sound as they tracked across the stone. Through the thin fabric, Lacertin felt heat radiating from the stone, as if it were some sort of oven, almost as if the entire fortress were shaped with fire. Such a shaping would be impossible, wouldn’t it? How could their fire shapers manage something with that intensity, and manage to maintain it? And why would they bother?

He pushed away the questions. He had not come to Incendin to learn more about its people. He had come to find what happened to his king, and to help
his
people.

A narrow hall stretched outside the room, running the length of the fortress. Lanterns created a soft glow, granting the black stone something of a sheen. Lacertin touched his fingers to the stone, thinking to find it wet here, but it was not.

At the end of the hall, he turned left. To the right were more rooms lining a wider corridor, but the other direction was less clear. If he were to find answers, he would find them within the palace.

With each step, he feared discovery. Not from the priest. Were the old man to find him, he would likely escort Lacertin back to the room, and perhaps lock him in this time. But what if one of the fire shapers discovered him? They had already demonstrated their willingness to torment him, regardless of what intent the priest claimed.

Another turn, and he smelled food simmering in the distance. His mouth watered, surprising given the foreign flavors he’d found so far while in Incendin, but there was something about them that reminded him of a simpler time, when he and his brother still lived with their mother long after their father had died. Her cooking was more traditional for their part of Nara, but different than what he’d found in the rest of the kingdoms.

Lacertin turned away from the kitchen. That way would be populated by cooks and servants and others that he wanted to avoid, at least until he had a better idea of what he might find in the palace.

Lacertin skirted the kitchen, ducking into corners whenever he heard someone moving in the halls. That was less frequent than he would have expected, and certainly less frequent than what he would have found in the palace in Ethea. When he had been there, servants were never all that far away, close enough that were he to have any needs, they would make certain they were satisfied. When Lacertin had stayed in the palace, when he had lived within its walls, the white-clad servants had been almost a sort of background noise, a constant presence that he learned to ignore. So far in the Fire Fortress, he had barely seen anyone other than the priest and his tormentors.

The next hall changed. Lanterns were brighter and set closer together. Walls were decorated with artwork, both woven tapestries made with such skill that he found it hard to believe they weren’t painted, as well as traditional painting, though in a style that was unique to Incendin.

A door opened and he pressed himself against a wall. The person coming out wore a long cloak hanging off one shoulder, leaving the other exposed. Long, dark hair hung down to the middle of her back. She had a sharp jawline and her mouth clenched in a frown.

When she passed Lacertin, she nodded and kept moving.

Lacertin waited, still expecting that a shaping would strike him at any time, fearful that she was a fire shaper like his tormentors had been. The dress was certainly the same, and the set to her jaw was much like the last woman who had come to him, but she ignored him as she made her way by.

He sighed and leaned back against the wall.

He should return to the room, but now that he was out, and now that he wandered the Fire Fortress, curiosity got the better of him. What else might he find? What secrets could he learn, secrets that shapers and warriors would once nearly trade their lives to reach?

And didn’t he trade his life for access to these secrets?

Lacertin wanted information, but he didn’t think that he would truly be allowed to escape from Incendin with his life. The priest might speak of Issa, a god of fire, and claim that Lacertin would serve Issa, but the gods had never been particularly interested in helping. The only god he had faith in was the Great Mother, and that only because he believed that he had felt her touch, that his ability to reach each of the elements stemmed from his connection to her, rather than any other force. And fire might be stronger for him, but that didn’t mean the other elements were weaker. That was the reason the other nations celebrated different deities, each as difficult to believe as Issa.

He pulled open the door the woman had come out of, not certain what to expect, but surprised nonetheless.

Inside was a massive room. Shelves lined the walls, and books were stuffed into the shelves, packed so tightly that no space remained. It was an archive, and one much like the archives in Ethea.

He pulled the door closed and looked around. Light came from a single lantern hanging from the ceiling and glowing with a brilliant white light. A shaper lantern, and much like those found within the kingdoms. Had he any doubt that the ancient kingdoms and the people of Rens once communicated, the similarities would have removed them.

Lacertin made his way around the room, looking at the covers of the books. Most were written in old Rens, a language he didn’t speak well enough to understand, but a few had evidence of
Ishthin
, the earliest language of the kingdoms.

He pulled one of the books from the shelf at random and started flipping through the pages. The book was ancient, much older than any that he’d ever been allowed to access in the archives. The words would take hours for him to decipher, but there were diagrams as well, most depicting strange animals that he had never seen.

He set it down and reached for another when a soft cough made him turn.

The woman he’d seen in the hall stood at the door, watching him with a flat expression. “Are you supposed to be here?”

Lacertin touched the book that he’d been reaching for, his fingers running along the supple leather cover. He pulled it from the shelf as he debated his answer. For him to get the answers to the questions that had brought him to Incendin, he would need help. The priest seemed more interested in trying to convert him. This woman, dressed like one of the Incendin shapers, at least spoke to him as if he were a person.

After all the time that he’d been isolated, a part of him craved the connection with someone else, even if it might be a fire shaper who might eventually want to torture him again.

“I don’t know.”

Her eyes widened as he spoke. “You are from the kingdoms.”

“From Nara.” Lacertin had decided before attempting the crossing that he would have to reveal his ties to Nara. Most in Incendin had sympathy for those of Nara, thinking that they could be drawn back into Rens.

She stepped into the room and pushed the door closed. “Many come to us from Nara. Few manage to learn enough to be useful. Fewer still are allowed within the Temple.”

Lacertin frowned. What temple had he entered? Would she do something to him now that he had?

“I didn’t mean to offend,” he said.

She glanced at the book in his hand. “Not offend, but to study, it seems.”

“I didn’t know that you had such a collection.”

The woman glared at him. “You think the kingdoms the only place that cares about scholarship? You think your university the only place where one can learn about the ancients and their connection to the elements and the elementals?”

Lacertin looked back down to the book in his hand, puzzling through the language before realizing that the word was likely old Rens for saldam. He knew of saldam as one of the elementals, but there had been none able to speak to the elementals, to listen to them and understand them, for generations. Most of the scholars now believed such a connection had been lost to time, that perhaps the ancient shapers had somehow angered the elementals.

He cared little for such questions. He was never going to be a scholar, regardless of his interest in the ancient histories and the connections that could be made to the present day politics. He had been asked to serve in a different way, drawn by a different skill set.

“I didn’t think that,” he said softly. “Again, I am sorry if I offended.”

The woman took another step toward him, her eyes flashing with a bright intensity. “How long have you been within the Sunlands?”

“I don’t know.”

She sniffed. “You think to hide from me the answer?”

Lacertin shook his head. “I don’t think to hide from you anything. I don’t know.”

Her eyes seemed to appraise him differently, taking in the shirt he wore and glancing down to his feet. As she did, her eyes widened. “How is it that you survived the testing?”

Lacertin laughed bitterly. “Why is it that everyone continues to refer to it as testing? Why not admit that you tortured me?”

“Issa would not permit that. Not in her temple.”

Lacertin glanced around. “That’s what this is?”

“You think it is something else?”

“I thought…” He didn’t know what he had thought, but certainly not that the Fire Fortress was some sort of temple to Issa. That explained the energy expended to maintain the shaping, and the desire to have an ongoing connection to Issa.

“You didn’t answer how you survived,” she said.

“Because I don’t know. I was… tested,” he said, and she nodded, “and then it stopped. When I made my way from the cell,” he paused, wondering if she would take offense to him calling it a cell, but he had no other term for it. He
had
been locked in a cell, regardless of whether he would have been allowed to leave. “When I made my way from the cell, I found the priest. The San.”

The woman’s eyes widened again. “Not just tested, but made a Servant,” she whispered.

“What does that mean?”

She took the book from his hands and placed it back on the shelf. “It means that you have a connection to Issa, even if you do not know it now.”

The woman stepped between Lacertin and the shelves, thrusting her chest forward, as if attempting to draw his attention. Lacertin stepped back and turned toward the door. He didn’t need any fire shaper attempting to seduce him.

Fire burned brightly, raging hot and intense, and most who shaped fire felt it as an intense connection, one that could flame passions as well as hatred. Warrior shapers generally avoided that fate, but shapers of fire exclusively usually did not. Most quickly surged to anger, but just as quickly surged to lust.