Firebrand

  He watched after her as she followed her maid toward the bed chamber. She glanced over her shoulder at him and smiled. When she disappeared from sight, he returned to the king’s rooms. When the valet appeared, he said, “Take the night off, Horston.”

  Apparently this was not too unusual a request for the servant didn’t argue. Instead, he bowed and left Slee alone. Slee went to the king’s bed chamber. First he created an illusion of a sleeping person beneath the covers should anyone come seeking the king; then he threw a casement window open and breathed deeply of the wintry air. Yes, he had business to attend to. He turned insubstantial and let the currents of the night wind carry him away.

  IN SLEE’S LAIR

  Plink.

  Plink.

  Plink.

  Zachary wiped water off his face.

  Plink.

  Plink.

  Was it part of some dream, this dripping?

  “Definitely male,” said a lovely female voice.

  He incorporated her words into the darkness of the dream.

  “Oh, we haven’t had a boy in so long.” Another female voice, but more ordinary.

  Plink.

  Plink.

  He shivered as more drops of icy water splattered on his face. They were much too real to be a dream. Darkness clung to his mind even as consciousness leaked in. He became aware of the hardness of the surface beneath him, the cold air. What happened? He remembered being up on the castle roof stargazing, and then . . . and then being slammed. His body hurt all over and he groaned.

  “He’s waking,” the lovely voice said.

  “Do you s’pose he’s a gift? I mean a new mate? We never got a big boy before. He looks strong.”

  “Yes, Magged, he looks very strong.”

  “Where . . . ?” he whispered. He opened his eyes to slits just in time for another drop to thunk on the bridge of his nose. He blinked rapidly, but still he could not see clearly. All was a blur, and light scorched his vision.

  “I hope he likes us.”

  “Hush now, Magged. Let him wake up.”

  Zachary gazed upward. Suspended over his head was a stalactite, and it was this that was dripping water onto his face. He shivered as he regained his senses, his flesh reacting to the cold air. He was naked. He sat up and someone squawked and jumped back. His mind darkened for a moment, then churned in a vortex of dizziness. He rolled to his side and retched up whatever remained of his midday meal. He sat there panting, and soon he found some equilibrium. The world stopped spinning and the scene around him resolved in his vision, and what he saw made no sense at first.

  He was in a huge rounded chamber of a cavern. Stalactites hung from the ceiling high above like gleaming teeth, droplets clinging to their pointed tips. The surface beneath him was smooth and moist. Dripstone—travertine—appeared to coat all the walls and floor like melted wax. Stalagmites grew up from the floor as mirrors of the stalactites above, some meeting in the middle to create grotesque pillars.

  A natural glow emanated from the pale stone illuminating the chamber in an eerie wet pearlescence. Adding to the dreamlike quality of it all were the statues and white marble sculptures set about the chamber. Mostly they were of beautiful nudes. One he recognized as in the style of the late Second Age, Sacoridian. Some appeared to have stood in the chamber long enough that they were in turn coated in layers of dripstone, their beautiful forms turned into nightmarish visions.

  A chest overflowed with gold and silver, and gem-encrusted jewelry. Large paintings leaned against one of the walls, but they were largely ruined by the damp and covered in mold. At one end of the cavern, dripstone had formed what looked like a frozen waterfall with a throne carved into it. A stone gryphon reclined beside it as though sleeping.

  Zachary’s gaze finally settled on two women. One had the youthful look and perfect features of an Eletian. The other was human, perhaps a little older than Laren, with long gray hair. Both were pale in the manner of his tomb caretakers, but reedy in a pinched, starved way, and this was not the dry, well-appointed tombs made by the hand of man, but a rugged, naturally formed cave.

  The women wore shapeless, undyed woolen shifts, and he remembered his own nakedness as they stared at him, but he figured that since they’d apparently gotten a good look at him already, there was no use in being modest now.

  He stood unsteadily, leaning against a natural stone pillar as thick as a small tree. “Where am I?” he demanded of the women. “Who are you?”

  The two exchanged glances, and then the Eletian stepped forward, the other woman clinging behind her.

  “You are in the domain of the slee,” she said in her hushed voice.

  Slee, the aureas slee, the ice elemental. It had struck again, but why had it snatched him and not Estora? He’d been led to believe that Estora was the one it had wanted. Perhaps the wards had protected her and the aureas slee had taken him in retaliation.

  A violent wind gusted into the cavern. The women scurried from the chamber, and he was lifted by icy hands and thrown against the wall. All went dark again. When he blinked his eyes open to light once more, he found he’d slid to the ground and that his head throbbed. To his surprise, Estora stood before him with her hands on her hips, a frosty mist swirling around her. Strangely, she was wearing his trousers and oversized shirt.

  He clambered to his feet, leaning against the wall to support himself. “My lady,” he said, “how is it that you’ve come to be here.”

  In three long strides she stood right before him and appraised him critically up and down. “I thought you’d be pleased to see me.”

  “Yes, yes, more than you know!”

  “Only because you want me to take you home.”

  He was confused. Could she do this, or was she now a captive of the aureas slee?

  She reached out and touched his cheek. Her hand was ice cold. “I do not think it’s because you want me.”

  “That is not—” He yelped when she raked his face with her nails.

  He touched his fingertips to his stinging cheek. They came away bloody. Before he could demand what she meant by her action, she whirled away, and when she turned to face him again, she’d turned into Karigan. His heart skipped a beat. His shirt flowed off her shoulders and draped below her hips. No patch covered her eye. She was as he remembered, but for the coldness of her gaze, and her eyes an otherworldly winter blue. A nightmare this was.

  “This is what you want, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what magic this is, but I will not have it.”

  “No? You think speaking like a king will get you what you want?”

  “Whoever or whatever you are,” he growled, “you know nothing.”

  “I know everything about you.” She stepped uncomfortably close to him, almost touching. Cold radiated off her.

  He swallowed hard. This was not Karigan. This was not Karigan. This was not—

  Her hand, as icy as Estora’s, wrapped around the back of his neck and violently pulled him into a kiss, a crushing kiss, she pressing against him. He tried to pull away, but she was unnaturally strong. He had dreamed of such a moment, but with Karigan, the real Karigan, with her physical and personal warmth, her sometimes tentative smile, her more gentle touch . . . The cold of contact with this false Karigan seeped through his skin, sending icy daggers of pain into his head.

  When she finally released him, he gasped for breath, and found himself nose-to-nose with himself. Repulsed, Zachary pressed back against the cavern wall.

  His other self laughed in his own voice. “Neither of them are yours. The first is mine. The second? We shall see. You have treated the Beautiful One without the adoration she deserves, but no matter. I will adore her, and your seed, the young she bears, will be mine as well.”

  Zachary hurtled at his false self, and was easily thrown across the chamber. He cra
shed into one of the statues. It was solid. He groaned and shook his head, then climbed to his feet once more. He would be bruised, badly so.

  “Your realm is now mine,” the other said, “and all it contains. You do not deserve it.”

  It was, Zachary thought, like looking into a skewed mirror. He saw himself and heard his own voice, and yet, it was all wrong.

  “You will have none of it,” he said.

  The other laughed. “You are but mortal and fragile.”

  A blast of wind hurled Zachary back into the statue and he found himself on the ground again. An inhalation proved painful and he wondered if he’d broken ribs.

  “You do not understand,” the other said. “You exist at my sufferance, as my slave only. You will die here, sooner or later. Meanwhile, I will enjoy making all that is yours mine.”

  There was another frigid breeze, and the other was gone. Zachary raised himself to a sitting position, grimacing at the pain in his ribs. So, the aureas slee could change its appearance. The Eletians had not mentioned this fact.

  The two women emerged from hiding and approached him tentatively.

  “That changeling creature,” he said, “that was the aureas slee.”

  “Yes,” the Eletian replied, and the one called Magged nodded behind her. “Slee is our master.”

  “It is not mine.”

  “Perhaps not, but Slee will see it differently, and accepting that will make it less difficult for you.”

  He nearly started to argue, but realized the futility of it, and the absurdity, for he still wore nothing but his own skin. He was starting to shiver from cold, and probably shock. The Eletian woman removed her shawl and draped it around his shoulders.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Come with us where it is warmer.”

  Zachary followed behind the two, pressing his hand against his ribs and wincing. Cracked and bruised, he thought, not broken. They led him behind a dripstone curtain formation and down steps carved into stone. The natural glow of the rock became more spotty, more like veins of some mineral in the limestone. Magged shyly glanced over her shoulder at him as they went. Soon they emerged into another large chamber. Little of the glow was in the walls and the air felt dryer. There were almost no formations. Glowing stalagmites that looked like they’d been broken off from elsewhere, however, provided light in strategic places around the chamber. He seized upon the idea of how useful a glowing mineral could be to light homes and streets, how it could be mined and brought to Sacor City, how there could be trade in—

  He stopped himself. He had no idea where this cave was located, and if it would even be feasible to get miners and equipment wherever this was. Not to mention he was a captive and needed to find a way to escape before he could even think of bringing miners to the site.

  A slab of rock rested in the center of the room and appeared to make a natural table. There were hides and wool blankets in nooks for sleeping that must have been painstakingly chipped out over a long period of time. Rough-hewn chairs provided seating, and someone had fashioned shelves upon which sat fine silver and gold cups and platters, and eating utensils. He ran his fingers across the nearest wall, which was incised with words and drawings.

  “This is our house,” Magged said proudly. “How do you like it?”

  “You live here? In this cave?”

  “It is our prison,” the Eletian said, “but it is home. Come, we will see what we can find for you to wear.”

  She led him across the chamber to a chest. It must have once looked magnificent, ornately carved and inlaid with ivory, but the carvings were blurred with mold, the ivory yellowed and cracked, and the hinges rusty. She lifted the lid and inside there was cloth. She started pulling out pieces of clothing—gowns and cloaks, and breeches and shirts, and, most disturbingly, the garb of children and infants.

  “Where has this all come from?” he asked.

  “Slee brings those it desires here,” the Eletian said, “in whatever they are wearing. Eventually the mortals die and leave behind their belongings. We weave some of our own cloth, of course.” She plucked at her homespun shift. “Slee will occasionally bring us a komara beast for the wool and meat.”

  The komara, Zachary knew, roamed the arctic wastes. “Are there others here, besides you and Magged?”

  “No. Slee has not collected anyone new since before Magged passed adolescence, a young boy, but he was sickly and did not last long.”

  He frowned, and cast an eye toward Magged, who held a fancy gown of silk and brocade, at least two centuries out of date, up to her shoulders. Most of the items looked to be from previous eras.

  The Eletian found him a linen shirt, yellowed from age, patched and mended, a velvet double-breasted waistcoat that may have once been green but had faded to grayish brown, and loose trousers and a belt that had not moldered too much. Rough woven socks and a sturdy pair of boots rounded out the ensemble.

  “Let me look at your ribs,” the Eletian said, “before you are all dressed.”

  He pulled on the trousers, and then let her probe his ribs. He flinched as she pressed.

  “Cracked, it would seem,” she murmured. “You will be sore for a time, but not much to be done for it. At least they are not broken. We’ve a hot spring you can soak in down below to ease the pain.”

  Zachary nodded his thanks and drew the shirt over his head. “What are you called?” he asked. There was great depth and age, he thought, in her stormy blue eyes. He’d seen the ocean that color off the coast of Hillander.

  “Nari,” she replied. “And should I call you ‘Your Majesty’? Slee made you sound a king.”

  “My name is Zachary.” Titles, he thought, were irrelevant here.

  “Magged is what she called herself when she came here,” Nari said. “I am not certain if that’s what her parents called her, for she was but a toddler when Slee brought her.”

  Zachary glanced at the woman, who was now whirling and dancing with the gown in her arms.

  “Slee doted on her at first, but then grew tired of her, as Slee does of all those it collects.”

  “She was just torn from her family?”

  “All of us who have been brought here were.”

  “I am sorry,” he said.

  “Were you not taken from your family?” Nari asked.

  “I don’t—” He was about to say he had no family, but then realized it wasn’t true. He had not only Estora, but Laren, too. In a sense, even his Weapons and the servants could be construed as family. He must return to them, especially Estora, for there was no telling what the aureas slee would do to her and his realm. He could not bear the thought of her being brought here to live with their children. And what of Karigan? Would the aureas slee hunt her down to punish him? He could not permit the elemental to harm any of his people, his family.

  Nari went to a small pool of water. A rivulet trickled out of a crack in the wall into the pool. She returned with a cloth and a tarnished silver bowl full of water. She dipped the cloth in the water and dabbed at his scored cheek.

  “How long have you been here?” he asked, grimacing at the sting.

  “I do not know,” she replied. “There is no time here, and nothing to gauge it by, except when Slee brings a mortal.” She glanced at Magged, who now folded the gown and replaced it in the chest. “It is only through the growth and death of the mortals that I know time.”

  DEAD ENDS

  Nari’s words about the passage of time became more profound to Zachary the longer he remained in Slee’s lair. There was no way of telling if it were day or night in the cavern. No natural daylight reached them; there was no place from which to view the sky. At least no place, he amended, he had yet found. He guessed a few days to a week had passed, but he could not say for sure. They slept when tired, and ate when hungry.

  Not that what was available for them to e
at sated their hunger. He learned the women subsisted mainly on a breadlike fungus that grew in certain sections of the cavern, in deeper levels that had no illumination from glowstone. They also ate pale, mute crickets with long legs like spiders. Sometimes, Nari told him, Magged used a fine net to catch the white eyeless fish that swam in the underground stream that flowed in the lowest level of the cavern, but they were small and boney, and had to be consumed raw for there was no wood to burn. Slee occasionally brought them fresh meat, such as the komara from which they spun wool to make clothes and blankets, but it was rare. Slee, apparently, did not think of them much at all.

  Zachary wondered how they did not go insane as he looked over the writing inscribed in the walls of the cavern where they resided. He ran his fingers over what looked like the scribblings of children that could have been dim memories of animals and trees and families in the outer world. There was Eletian script, and some that was Old Sacoridian. Rhovan and Hura-deshian, and other writing styles he could not identify, also covered the walls. He found dates and names chipped into the rock from hundreds of years ago.

  I want to go home, was one plaintive inscription written in the common tongue, to be with my husband and children. Please, O Aeryc and Aeryon, help me.

  How many hundreds, how many thousands, had been abducted by the ice elemental? How could it be stopped? Slee was accustomed to taking what it wanted, and Zachary was certain it would not negotiate. He must stop it. But how did one stop the wind or the rain, the sun or the clouds?

  He wondered what transpired in Sacor City, what mischief the aureas slee was getting into. Would his people recognize the imposter? Laren surely would. His worry for Estora and their children nearly drove him mad. He also worried about the state of his realm, and preparation for conflict. What if his cousin, Xandis Amberhill, was found? What if he wasn’t? In the future time, Karigan had seen that he’d become one with Mornhavon, and had overthrown Sacoridia and led it into a very dark age. Zachary must escape the cave. He must protect Estora and his realm.