Prelude to Fire: Parts 1 and 2 (26 page)

Fire burned brightly within the king, making his skin practically glow.

Lacertin could feel the way the infection burned and pushed against it, sending the power of his shaping through the king. With one more surge, the poisoning burned from him.

Then Lacertin shifted the shaping, adding more water, using strength from Cora to send waves of water over the king. Without her strength, he doubted that he would be able to use enough water. It surged in time with the pounding of blood in his veins. Lacertin held onto the shaping, pushing it through the king.

Water washed with increasing strength and then faded.

Lacertin stepped back. There was nothing more that he could do.

Cora remained next to the king, standing at his bed. “Did it work?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

The priest stood behind the king and placed his hands on his face. A soft fire shaping built from him, settling over the king, and raced from his head down to his feet. The priest sighed and released his shaping. Then he looked over to Lacertin. “Issa was wise to send you to us.”

L
acertin relaxed
outside the Fire Fortress, looking out into the barren land around the fortress. The sun was only now beginning to ascend, but the day was already hot. Cora stood opposite him while he used a shaping of earth, trying to demonstrate earth.

“I do not feel it,” Cora said.

Lacertin pushed even more effort into his shaping of earth, directing it toward her. “How about now?”

Cora shook her head. “Something bothers you, Lacertin Alaseth.”

He smiled slightly, staring into the expanse of the waste. Heat shimmered from the rock already, leaving a shimmery veil hanging over the land. In that way, it reminded him of what the lisincend managed with their heat shaping. Since healing the king, he had wondered what would change now that the king was restored. Lacertin had grown to trust the priest, but did not have the same faith with how the king would respond.

“Nothing more than usual.”

Cora took a step toward him. The longer that he worked with her, the more easily he was able to sense her. It was a physical presence, a combination of heat and her raw energy, and it rubbed on his awareness in a way that he found appealing. He struggled to push that away from his mind, though with each day it became more difficult.

“You should be pleased. You demonstrated the strength of Issa as you healed our king.”

“I am not sure that it was Issa so much as it was you. Without your help, I don’t think that I could have done it. I’m not strong enough.”

She touched his arm. Heat simmered under her touch, making his arm tingle. She looked at him with an intensity that bordered on desire and a surge of shaping drifted from her and traced around him, trailing from her fingers and circling his arm. Without meaning to, Lacertin pulled on the shaping, wrapping his around what she did.

“What do you fear?”

“Our people have been at war for decades,” Lacertin said. “And I am—or was—a warrior of the kingdoms. Anything I do that helps our enemy makes me…” He couldn’t say that he was a traitor, but that was what he was.

“Are we enemies, Lacertin Alaseth?” she asked softly.

Lacertin turned to her. “Us? I… I don’t know what we are, Cora, only that even teaching you would be considered treason.” He paused and nearly pulled away from her, but he enjoyed her closeness and the warmth coming from her skin. A floral fragrance mixed with a crisp, clean scent. Where would she find flowers in Incendin to create the floral perfume?

He shook the thoughts away, focusing on her face and struggling not to think of her lips and the way the cloth clung to her hips, her chest, or the way the warmth surging through it pressed on him. “How would you be viewed if you crossed into the kingdoms? You already told me that you wouldn’t study at the university, and I imagine it’s for much the same reason.”

“I would not study in your kingdoms because I would not be welcomed.”

He opened his mouth to say that she
would
be welcomed, or that
he
hadn’t been welcomed, but wasn’t sure that either were true. In the kingdoms, even those from Nara, a place within the borders, were treated poorly. How would it be if someone came to the university from Incendin? What sort of reception could she expect?

Not warmth and welcome, he knew.

But then, he hadn’t necessarily been welcomed here, had he?

They claimed he had been tested, and that the torment and torture that he’d endured had been for his benefit, to ensure that he could serve Issa, but Lacertin didn’t think that it had all been for that reason. They wanted to know
why
he had come. Wasn’t that the reason the priest had worked so closely with him?

But after he passed, he
had
been welcomed. Mostly. There were those, shapers like Alisz, who distrusted him, but he understood the reason. Such distrust was even warranted, considering everything that he had done.

“You are welcome in the Sunlands, Lacertin Alaseth. Your home may be different, but you will find welcome.”

He nodded, staring out at the rock. “From you. And from the priest. But the others?” He shook his head. “They don’t trust me, and they shouldn’t.”

“The other Servants see the way that you serve Issa. Now that you’ve healed our king—”

“We healed him, Cora.”

“Now that you’ve healed our king,” she repeated, as if he hadn’t spoken, “others will know that you are sent to us from Issa.”

The heat veil shimmered out on the horizon. “And the lisincend? How will they react?”

He hadn’t seen them since coming to Incendin, but given the interactions that he’d had with the lisincend in the past, he didn’t expect the welcome to be the same.

“Those who embraced fire serve in a different way.”

“What way is that?”

She shook her head. “Different.”

Lacertin waited for her to say anything more, but she didn’t.

“Try reaching for earth again,” he said to her. Lacertin pulled on a shaping of earth, making the deep depths vibrate. The sense was barely there, and one that he couldn’t feel but sensed. He made no effort to mask it, wanting Cora to reach it. So far, he hadn’t been successful.

Water had come much more naturally, but then, she was a powerful shaper of water, even more than her ability with wind. Fire still came first, and he’d seen that she was most comfortable with it, but she would have possessed much potential to learn healing had she gone to the kingdoms.

She strained, her face screwing up in concentration, but she eventually shook her head. “I sense… maybe something, but I don’t know whether it’s because I want to sense it or because it is actually there.”

Lacertin nodded. “In time.”

“What if I never reach earth?”

He smiled. He’d once asked much the same question, only with water. He had struggled to reach water in the same way that Cora struggled with earth. “Once you can shape more than one of the elements, the others eventually come. It may happen immediately, or it may take weeks to months. Everyone’s connection is different.”

“And you?”

He pulled on a shaping of water. Now that he knew about the small pond hidden over the rise, he was able to draw on water more easily. The dry air of Incendin made it difficult otherwise. He could pull from the ocean, but there was something different to shaping the sea for him. The connection was harder… more strained in some ways.

Lacertin let water swirl around him. First on the ground and then swirling up his arms, eventually reaching his chest and back. He mixed fire with it and steam hissed from him. A pretty shaping, but one that was essentially useless. In that way, it was much like the shaping of fire that he’d learned to master, using fire in ropes.

“Water came to me the last,” he said when the steam began to dissipate. “I am of Nara, and fire came to me first, much like it does to most from Nara.”

Like it came to his brother, he didn’t say. When Chasn had crossed the waste, Lacertin had wanted to follow, if only to bring him back. Leaving Nara meant abandoning the kingdoms, a form of treason, but few who made the crossing saw it in that way.

“Then came wind. After that, it took me weeks before I connected with earth. I still remember the day when I felt the rumbling draw of power from one of our earth shapers. He was powerful and controlled the depths of earth in ways that I would never really understand, even now. He had the wisdom to bring me to a place where the earth elements are strong, where the elementals are still thought to live. When I first felt the pull of earth, I knew that I could shape it, and finally began to understand the lessons that others had been trying to teach me for so long. Water was harder. I think months passed, and during that time, I began to think that I would be the one shaper able to master three of the four elements, one who would never be a warrior shaper.”

“What is so special about becoming a warrior?”

“Perhaps nothing now,” he said. “Once, warriors came from each land and bound us together. Now… now, warriors are only from the kingdoms. You will be the first from outside the kingdoms that I’ve heard of in centuries.” He mixed a shaping of each of the elements together, binding it so that it swirled in a quick shaping that exploded from his hand. “There are certain shapings that can only be done by warrior shapers. Traveling is the best known. Without each of the elements, a shaper cannot travel.”

“You have shown me how you slide on the wind,” she said.

Cora demonstrated the shaping, moving forward a dozen steps on a shaping of wind. Fire fortified it, as it often did with her shapings.

Lacertin smiled. He
had
demonstrated that shaping, and it had not taken her long to master. Sliding on the wind was something that many wind shapers mastered, and few warriors. Most felt it was better to simply travel by lightning and let the warrior shaping draw them across the sky, but there wasn’t always the same control with that shaping and there were times when it made more sense to use a different approach.

“That is one way to travel, especially now that you’ve learned wind, but there is a different shaping, one that is much more powerful.”

With a mixture of each of the elements, Lacertin pulled the shaping down toward him, demonstrating it slowly. Lightning streaked from the sky, striking the ground where he stood, and then carried him up above the ground, to the thin wisps of clouds that he couldn’t even see when he stood on the ground. Lacertin hovered for a moment and then returned to the ground, shooting back down on the same shaping.

When he stepped away from the shaping, Cora watched him with renewed interest. “You shaped yourself on lightning.”

He nodded. “It is not only lightning, but that is a part of it. All of the elements are needed for this shaping to work. In the kingdoms, we call it the warrior’s shaping. None but warriors can make it work. Even a shaper representing each of the elements cannot make it work. There is something of the shaper, something from the Great Mother—”

He cut himself off and smiled. “Anyway, there is something the shaper brings into the shaping that allows it to work. Without it, it does not.”

“How do you do it? I saw fire and wind, but the others…”

“Water is there to stabilize. And earth gives strength.”

She nodded, her mouth pinched in a line. “And so until I master earth, I cannot try this shaping of yours.”

“You can try, but without earth, it is unlikely to work.”

Cora nodded. “Then help me find earth,” she said. “If I am to master it, I would find my connection to it.”

As Lacertin stared out over the Incendin waste, at the shimmery heat veil that hung over the rock, the sun slowly crawling into the sky, he pulled on earth again for Cora, feeling the same familiar sense of hesitancy begin to creep in, mixing with self-doubt. Was this what he was now? Years spent as First Warrior, time spent serving the kingdoms, and now he was a betrayer of those kingdoms. He taught one of their enemies the shapings that made them strong. And he had saved their king.

Lacertin didn’t know what he was meant to be. Not a Servant of Issa, as the priest claimed. Faith had never been something he had much of. And he was no longer a warrior of the kingdoms. He might be a warrior, and he might have come
from
the kingdoms, but that wasn’t his identity either. Without a mission, without some way of serving something, Lacertin didn’t know what—or who—he was.

Cora watched him, almost as if knowing his thoughts.

Then there was Cora. He couldn’t deny the attraction to her, but where had his desires led him before? With Ilianna, he had lost her when Ilton continued to send him away from the kingdoms, each time on increasingly complex missions, almost as if keeping him from Ethea. By the time he finally returned, when he finally thought that he might have time for something more with her, she had moved on. Lacertin couldn’t blame her. His focus had been her father and his service to the kingdoms. There had been potential with the water shaper Jayna, and interest that was mutual, he suspected, but Lacertin hadn’t dared attempt anything with her, not with what he’d discovered of Ilton. Besides that, there had been the hope, however faint, that he might find a way to finally have the time with Ilianna that he so badly desired.

Now all of that was gone. Lacertin remained a broken man in some ways, and he would not do anything to harm Cora.

No, it was better to keep his distance, to teach as he had promised.

Even as he did, a question nagged at him, one that he didn’t have an answer for. Once she learned, what would become of him?

W
hen the knock
came on his door, Lacertin was barely awake.

He shook the sleep off as quickly as he could and pulled on the clothes folded neatly next to the bed, and wished for windows so that he could see what time of day it was. Within this part of the Fire Fortress, there were no windows to the outside world. Only the comings and goings of servants, and the knocking from the priest, gave him any sense of time of day.

But he still felt tired. The day spent working with Cora, demonstrating shapings for her while at the same time trying to coax an ability with earth from her, had drained him. He couldn’t have been asleep more than a few hours, could he? Much too early for the priest to come for him.

When he pulled the door back and saw who stood on the other side, he stiffened.

“Alisz.”

Her hands were clasped behind her back and she fixed Lacertin with an expression that was parts angry and interested. Rarely had a woman—anyone, for that matter—looked at him in that way.

“You are here, Lacertin Alaseth.”

He grunted. “Where else would I be?”

She shrugged. “You are not confined to this place. You have been tested by Issa and given the freedom of the temple.”

“Only the temple?”

“Where else would you go?” she asked. The suspicion was plain in the question.

“I would go nowhere else,” he said carefully, “only that if I have been tested by Issa and passed, I would presume that I would be free to roam wherever I chose.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “You are a dangerous man, Lacertin Alaseth.” This time, the accusation was clear. “You will come with me.”

“Is that a command, or a request?”

She frowned but didn’t answer.

Lacertin shook his head and slipped the soft sandals onto his feet as he followed her through the temple. After descending several levels, she stopped, pulled open a door, and waved him in.

Lacertin followed, but reluctantly.

Inside the room, he saw rows of strange objects. There was a collection of clothing and helms and weapons alongside sculptures and paintings, and other items that he suspected were incredibly valuable. His eyes were drawn only to one object: the warrior sword that he had taken from Ilton’s chamber.

“Why did you bring me here?” he asked in a whisper.

“That is yours?” she asked.

Lacertin nodded. Next to his sword were at least a dozen others, each with slightly different shapes, but the runes along the blade and running into the hilt were much the same. They were warrior swords. How many warriors had been lost to Incendin over the years? And why hold the swords here?

“May I?” he asked.

Alisz frowned. “It is why I brought you here, Lacertin Alaseth. Claim your sword.”

As he took it and buckled it back around his waist, noting the strange way that it chafed against the Incendin fabric, he looked over at Alisz. “Why is it that you return this to me?”

“You are no longer a threat.”

Lacertin doubted that he had ever been a threat. The easy way that the fire shapers managed to manipulate fire was different than anything that he possessed. They were powerful, and focused, in ways that the kingdoms did not—and could not—understand.

“Why now?” he asked. He had been free within Incendin for weeks, and they only now felt that he wasn’t a threat? No, there was something more to it than she was telling him.

“There is something more,” she said.

What more might Alisz have that she would keep from him? Enough that she was willing to return his sword to him, and enough that she would come to him…

“You need my help with something,” he realized.

She remained silent.

“And you think that having a warrior would help.” That was the reason that she had returned his sword to him. But why would Incendin need a warrior? What could she hope to gain from him?

“Not a warrior. Lacertin Alaseth.”

He ran his fingers along the sword, tracing the runes along the hilt. This had been Ilton’s sword; the rune pattern told him so. The different runes gave each sword subtle differences and allowed them to work with certain shapers better than others. His original sword had taken him days of testing to find the right fit. Borrowing Ilton’s had been done out of necessity, but surprisingly the sword had responded to him well, almost as if he had chosen it for himself.

“I am a warrior,” he said.

Alisz studied him a moment, her eyes flashing with an unreadable expression. “The San tells us that you no longer serve as First Warrior to the kingdoms. That Issa has chosen you to aid the Sunlands. Do you claim that it is anything else?”

Lacertin sighed. “I don’t make any claim anymore. Even if I did, I doubt the kingdoms would claim me.”

“Good. Then you will come with me and prove that you can serve Issa.”

* * *

L
acertin stood
among the group of shapers, the surge of their fire shaping washing over the land, almost like what Lacertin had seen with earth shapers from the kingdoms. Of the fire shapers, he knew Alisz and Cora, but no others. From what he could tell, they were all Servants of Issa, fire shapers of incredible strength and ability. None had said much to him in the time that he traveled with them, walking across the rugged rock of Incendin.

“We could travel differently here,” he said to Cora when they stopped for the evening.

“You could. The others cannot.”

“You could as well. You could use wind.”

“Then I would not travel with the Servants.”

Lacertin looked over to Alisz and wondered if maybe they could simply meet the Servants wherever Alisz intended for them to go, but she refused to elaborate on where they traveled. Cora claimed that she didn’t know where they went, but Lacertin couldn’t help but notice that they made their way toward the kingdoms.

“Does she think that I will attack the kingdoms?” he asked.

A troubled expression crossed Cora’s face. She touched his hand, and warmth and tingling radiated from her. “You would not be asked to attack your people.”

Lacertin wasn’t sure, especially if Alisz intended for him to prove that the kingdoms were no longer his people. How else would he prove that he wanted to be within Incendin than by attacking the kingdoms? He had no intent of showing Alisz how to get past the barrier. He wasn’t sure that the separation between their countries was right for their people, but allowing the fire shapers to cross meant a different kind of betrayal than he was willing to do.

“Are you sure that you know what your sister will have me do?”

Cora took a drink from a water skin and wiped her arm across her mouth. “Alisz serves Issa differently than I know.”

Lacertin focused on Alisz as she sat with the other fire shapers around a large, crackling fire. They spoke softly to each other, and Lacertin resisted the urge to pull on a shaping of wind to draw their voices to him. If she discovered him shaping her, he suspected that she would not react well.

Lacertin stood and walked away from the fire. Cora followed him, the sense of her right behind him, carrying with her the floral perfume she wore. He noticed it mostly because it was so different than anything else in Incendin.

“You should stay near the fire, Lacertin Alaseth,” she said.

“Why? Because Alisz wants me to stay near her?”

“The Sunlands can be a dangerous place when night falls.”

He touched the hilt of his sword. One of the things he had done after gaining his sword was learning to use it as a sword, something that not all warriors bothered to do. Lacertin was skilled enough that he could actually fight without using shaping if needed.

“What are you afraid of here, Cora? Are these not your lands?”

“The Sunlands are my home, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t recognize the danger when it exists. Are there not places within the kingdoms that you would not be comfortable?”

“I am a warrior shaper. There are not many places that I need to worry.”

“Then that is because you do not have creatures of power.”

“Elementals? Is that what you fear?” Lacertin had never seen any elemental. They were all around him, such as ara, said to exist in the wind, or udilm in the sea, but they weren’t creatures that he could see. Those elementals that once had been visible had been hunted, creatures like the draasin or grosan, presumably to make places safer. “Or do you fear the hounds?”

Cora breathed out softly. “The creatures you call the hounds… They are powerful creatures of fire and do not even recognize Servants of Issa. We have learned to avoid them.”

“You can’t sense as they approach?”

“Near fire, yes. Too far from fire, and they can approach without warning. Remain near the fire, and the Servants will detect when they approach.”

“What of the lisincend?”

Cora hesitated before answering. “Those who have embraced fire command the hounds.”

That was basically what the kingdoms had surmised as well. The lisincend were twisted creatures, and it took their unique power to control the hounds and force them to follow. The kingdoms had never seen hounds controlled by other fire shapers. Often, when the hounds were seen, there was nothing that controlled them, only the rage and anger of fire.

A howl erupted in the night, as if a reminder.

Lacertin turned back toward the fire. Two of the fire shapers approached it. Their shaping built, surging the flames into the night with a powerful shaping that spiraled up and away from them. The flames danced, flickering higher and higher.

“How is it that the flames don’t draw the hounds?”

“That is part of the shaping,” Cora said.

He focused on the shaping that the Servants of Issa used as they built the flames higher. What he thought was only fire was something more. He detected the way the Servants’ shaping pressed out, pushing into the night, creating something of a bubble of pressure that surged far away.

“That holds them back?” he asked.

Lacertin thought that he could reproduce the shaping. By itself, it was not all that complex. It only required significant strength with fire. He had that strength, possibly enough that he could do something similar. Knowing that might be useful, especially if he was in Incendin for much longer.

“It deters them,” Cora said.

Lacertin wondered why they would be able to deter the hounds. What was it about the shaping that worked against them? Like the lisincend, the hounds had some strange ability with fire, some connection that the kingdoms had never discovered.

Another howl echoed, this time farther away. The shaping had worked.

Cora touched his arm. “Come back to the fire, Lacertin Alaseth. You will need to rest.”

Lacertin stared into the darkness a few moments before following Cora to sit near the fire. As he settled down, he noted how Alisz watched him, and the darkness in her eyes.

Once more, he wondered what she intended for him to do. Whatever it was must have the priest’s approval or he would have stopped Lacertin from going with her, but he would rather know what she intended of him before venturing with her.

The only reassurance he had was that he could shape himself away, travel on the warrior shaping if needed, and they would not be able to follow.

Only, where would he go?