Fireborn

  “Are you really going to battle?” Selwin asked.

  I hope so. I love a good battle, and it’s been far too long since we had any fighting to speak of.

  “Yes.” Hallow eyed the boy for a moment, then shook his head, and pulled the staff from the sheath on his back. He held the staff at arm’s length. “Thorn, I want you to deliver a message for me.”

  A message? The wooden bird form atop the staff quivered excitedly.

  “Can you carry one?”

  Of course I can. The bird’s wings stretched and flapped. I was the Master of Kelos, the Light of Bellias Starsong, savior of a thousand Starborn, and an arcanist of such renown that my very spirit remains strong when those of others fade into the twilight. I am the—

  “A simple ‘yes’ will suffice. I need you to take this scroll to Darius in Starfall City. Do you know him?”

  Mealymouthed fellow who stands for the Starborn in the Council of Four Armies? Thorn snorted. What do you want him for? He doesn’t have the stomach for fighting. Didn’t he let Lord Israel take care of the handful of Harborym who remained after you killed the others?

  “Nonetheless, it is to him I wish for you to take this message. The others, I will deliver myself.”

  He held up the scroll for the bird to grasp. It did so, making a few swoops through the room before darting out a window. Don’t fight without me! I’ll be back as soon as I deliver the message.

  Hallow said nothing, just went to a small chest hidden under a table bearing numerous vials of various liquids. He forgot for a moment that Selwin remained in the chamber, the chest bringing back so many memories.

  And so much pain.

  He opened it, pulling out the scarred and stained sheath that he used for Thorn when he was fighting. “Still usable, despite being locked away for almost a year,” he said to himself, and set it aside.

  Several garments were next. He took them out and shook them. “Could do with an airing, but there’s no time for that.”

  “Is that the clothes you wore for the Battle of the Fourth Age?” Selwin asked, his tone almost comically reverential. “My father told me that you fought in that.”

  He touched one of the laces on a sleeve, remembering how Allegria had hurriedly unbound them.

  Allegria.

  He’d tried to avoid thinking of her over the last few months. He tried not to remember her shining black hair, the way her eyes would light with gold flecks set in onyx, her wit and warmth, and her delight in intimate pursuits. He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the scent of wildflowers that clung to her no matter how long she’d been fighting. The pain was just as sharp as it had been the day she’d fled the throne room.

  If only his body hadn’t been so broken.

  If only he’d hadn’t collapsed trying to follow her, to stop her, to make her see reason.

  If only she’d stayed with him.

  “So many lost opportunities,” he murmured. The sound brought him back to the present, and, with it, awareness of the freckle-faced boy who knelt beside him. “There’s no time for sentimentality now, Selwin. We must act.”

  “All right. Do you want me to do something?”

  “Yes. Go home. I’ll send the captain of the guard with you to Knellsbridge,” he said, naming a town three days’ travel. “Your father’s farm isn’t far from that, is it?”

  “Half a day’s walk, faster if I have a horse,” the boy said wistfully.

  “Tell the captain to give you the new gray gelding. It can be a gift to your father,” Hallow said.

  Selwin’s eyes widened in excitement. “Are you sure, master? You just bought the gelding.”

  “I’m sure. I won’t have time to train him, so your father might as well have the benefit of him. Now go, pack your things, and send the captain of the guard to me.”

  Selwin’s sandals slapped on the stone floor as the boy dashed from the room.

  Hallow rose and commenced gathering a few things into a leather satchel. It had been a long time since he’d left Kelos, not since the day he returned from the fruitless effort to see Allegria, but he went about the business of collecting necessary items almost mechanically. A compass, two canteens, his personal book in which he kept spells he was crafting, some silver coins, a pair of daggers, and ... silver glinted from the bottom of the chest. Pain hit him in the gut hard as he removed the two narrow swords, gems at the hilt glowing in the morning light when he held them up.

  Allegria’s swords. He’d taken them from one of Lord Israel’s men who had claimed them, much to the man’s dismay. Hallow had been careful to keep the swords from Israel’s sight, since Allegria had told him they had been made for the queen.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he tied the swords onto the satchel, and donned his travel clothes.

  * * *

  It was a week almost to the hour that the ship traveling from Genora to Aryia landed at Abet, the capital city of the Fireborn. He didn’t wait to answer the summons he’d received, instead heading south along the coast. Two days later he was on the road to the temple that he had become familiar with the year before. As he neared the temple, his heart started beating faster.

  The same porter guarded the door as had been on duty the last time he’d come.

  “Greetings,” he said, dismounting from the horse he’d bought in Abet. “Feliza, isn’t it?”

  The porter blinked at him a couple of times, puzzled. “It’s ... you’re Hello, aren’t you?”

  “Hallow of Penhallow. Now of Kelos. Master of Kelos, not that I’ve taken much pleasure in that title. I’ve come to see Allegria.”

  Wariness replaced the confusion in the priestess’s eyes. “You’re back, are you? Well, you know as well as I do that you can’t see her. No one sees her.”

  “I know that. I also know that this time, I’m not going to let her send me away until I’ve accomplished my goal. Would you tell her that I’m here, and I won’t leave until she speaks to me.”

  Feliza was shaking her head even before he finished the last sentence. “You don’t seem to understand what hermitage is. She sees no one, my lord. Not even us—the priestesses. We are forbidden her company.”

  “She must see someone. What about Lady Sandorillan?”

  “No one sees Allegria.”

  Hallow sighed, then got down onto his knees. “It’s not often that I beg, but Allegria touched my heart the way no other woman has. I must see her. I will not leave until I do so. If you insist on denying me, I will remain here and return every hour to prostrate myself before you, before your goddess, before anyone who can take me to her. Understand, I am desperate. This will happen, or I will die in the trying.”

  Feliza’s gaze softened upon him. “Quickly, get to your feet lest someone see you,” she urged, tugging at his arm. “I shouldn’t tell you this—goddess knows I shouldn’t—but Kiriah is benevolent and rewards those who are pure of heart, and you must surely have a pure heart if you are willing to sacrifice yourself just to see Allegria.” She glanced around, hesitated, then said softly, with rushed words, “Some of the others think she may have died. One of the younger girls said she’d seen bones in the cave where Allegria was banished, but Lady Sandor said it was only a goat skeleton.”

  “Allegria lives in a cave?” That wasn’t at all what Hallow had pictured.

  Feliza looked him dead in the eye and said blandly, “I don’t know what you are talking about, Lord of Kelos. I mentioned nothing about the caves to the north, found in the cliffs that follow the stream.”

  “No,” Hallow said, joy blossoming in his chest. “You didn’t. Thank you for not telling me.”

  She bowed her head in acknowledgment. “Kiriah’s blessings upon you.”

  The door set into the great stone wall closed firmly. Hallow didn’t waste time—he simply mounted his horse and headed for the rocky cliffs to the north of the temple.

  He left the horse at the base of the cliff since the path was steep and narrow. As it was, it took him some ti
me to find the entrance of a small cave. It was empty of all but a chair and small table, a cot, and a chest upon which sat an altar to Kiriah. “At least I know where she was,” he said to himself, and went out to survey the cliff face. A narrow track wound upward. He followed it, emerging at the top, where a field of tall grass waved gently in the afternoon air. Lying on a flat rock was the figure of a woman, her arms outspread, her eyes closed.

  For one brief, horrible moment, he thought she was dead, but as he approached, she wrinkled her nose and rubbed it before resuming her spread-arm position. She looked exactly the same as she had a year before—her hair was as glossy and black as a raven’s wing. The line of dots remained across her forehead. Her face was as fresh as if she’d just stepped from a bath.

  The memory of the night she’d done just that returned with a heat of blood to his groin, but he told his body to stop thinking of that, and attend to the present. “You look just as lovely as you did the first day I saw you.”

  Allegria frowned, then sat up, one hand shading her eyes so she could look up at him. He watched with interest as her face expressed first confusion, then joy, then despair, quickly followed by anger.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He ignored the emphasis on the pronoun, holding up a hand when she got to her feet. “Pax, Allegria. Do not run off in a snit.”

  “A snit?” She marched up to him and poked him in the chest. Hard. Absently, he rubbed the spot. “I do not have snits!”

  “You threw something very like one eleven months and twenty-two days ago, when I was broken and bleeding and could barely stand, let alone run after you.”

  She blinked a couple of times before saying, “You betrayed me! I didn’t run from you in a snit—I ran from you in abject betrayal. You, a man to whom I’d given myself, and with whom I was very likely falling in love.”

  He was oddly pleased despite the situation. “You were? I was quite smitten with you, too. That’s why I asked you to stay—”

  “You asked me to stay so you could cozen up to your overlord. Who you also betrayed!” Allegria slapped her hands on her thighs and turned to march away across the grassy cliff top.

  “How did I betray Lord Israel?” This was not how he’d pictured their meeting. He expected anger, perhaps tears, and then a joyful reunion. He did not anticipate Allegria hurling accusations at him and storming off. “Not that I betrayed you, but let’s start with Israel.”

  “You broke your fealty to him,” she snapped, swishing her hand angrily through the tall grass. He caught up to her, aware that a sense of life had returned to him that had been missing since the moment she had run out of the throne room.

  “What fealty?” he asked, perplexed. He had a vague memory of her saying something about fealty before, but he’d given it no mind at the time.

  “Whatever it is you swore to Lord Israel. Whatever it was you threw aside so you could seduce me and join Deo’s company, which, come to think of, you also betrayed by working all along for Lord Israel. I wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up in Starfall when he did because you told him where we were going.”

  He took her by the arm and spun her around to face him. He was willing to allow others to think ill of him when it didn’t matter, but this did. It mattered a lot. “My heart, I owed fealty to no one.”

  “Don’t call me that,” she said, pulling her arm from his grasp. “I’m not your heart.” She paused for a moment. “What do you mean you owed no fealty? You were an apprentice. You had to swear fealty in order to take that position.”

  “My master was dead, and at that time, I had no other.”

  Her eyes scanned his face, obviously looking for signs he was dissembling. “But ... you were with Lord Israel’s company—”

  “With them, yes, because it was a mutually beneficial arrangement.” He ran his hand up her arm until he could cup her chin. “I did not betray anyone. I did not tell him where Deo’s company was, and I certainly did not use you as you assumed I did. I wanted to see Deo for myself, because I’d witnessed his banishing, and heard only that he was mad and a puppet to the chaos magic. What you said about him made me curious, but I wanted to join his company only because I believed in him, not to betray him.”

  “But ...” She rubbed the line of spots across her forehead. “You didn’t tell Lord Israel what Deo was doing?”

  “No.” He grimaced, and admitted, “It’s true I kept the knowledge to myself that the Four Armies were setting off for Starfall the morning after we left them, but that was because you said Deo was already on his way there. I knew he would reach it in advance of his father’s company. I didn’t think Lord Israel would travel quite so swiftly, but that, my heart, is all I’m guilty of.”

  Her eyes narrowed with suspicion, but he thought he knew her well enough, so he waited while she worked through all of that. After a few minutes, she shook her head, and leaned into him. “All this time, I thought you had used us. Used me to get to Deo, in order to curry favor.”

  He wrapped his arm around her, taking pleasure in the warmth of her body against his, a pleasure that was increased when he gave a few subtle sniffs and found that she still smelled like wildflowers. “I tried to explain, but you ran away.”

  “You could have told me that I was an idiot and wrong,” she mumbled into his shoulder.

  “I tried that, too, but only made it to the door of the throne room before my body gave out. It took some time before I was healed enough to travel, and by the time I found your temple, you had been secreted away. I was told you refused to see anyone.”

  “Kiriah’s blood, I feel like such a fool thinking what I did—wait, you said that you came to the temple?”

  “I did. Several times, in fact, over the course of about three days. I even pleaded my case before the head priestess. I assume by the look on your face that you were not told I petitioned to see you?”

  “No.” She looked horrified. “I received no message from you. I assumed you didn’t want to see me again. I assumed—I thought you—”

  “You thought I was a bastard who loved you and left you,” he said with a grim smile. “Well, it’s not the most flattering thing that’s been said of me, but it’s not the worst either.”

  She stared at him for a minute, pain in her eyes. “Sandor must have interfered ... but how could she do that to me? Why would she hide your visits from me?”

  Hallow didn’t feel it was his place to speak ill of the temple’s leader, even though it was obvious she had deliberately kept them apart. “I can only assume she acted in a way she thought for the best.”

  Regret danced across her face. “Hallow, I can’t even begin to tell you how foolish I feel, and how sorry I am for not trusting you, and thinking so ill of you. All these months, wasted, and for what? My foolish pride, and Sandor’s ill wishes.”

  “I don’t know that she wished either of us ill, but she certainly did not want us together.” Hallow damned his own actions of the past. Why hadn’t he pursued Allegria when he was here? Why hadn’t he continued to argue with Lady Sandorillan, begging, demanding, pleading to see Allegria? “I could have done more. I could have fought harder.”

  “This is not your doing. It’s my fault, and I will regret it to the end of my days.”

  Her sadness made him want to sweep her up into his arms, but he steeled himself against such a reaction. He had to stay focused. “Let us share the blame, and move forward.”

  “That’s it, be the reasonable one. I’ve missed that about you almost as much as I’ve missed your eye crinkles.” Allegria slid her arms around his neck and would have kissed him had he not gently pushed her back.

  “No, do not make that face,” he said, laughing when she looked outraged. “There is nothing I want more than to lay you down on the grass and love you as I’ve dreamed of these last eleven months, but we have no time.”

  “Why don’t we have time? Time is all I have had. There were days when I thought I’d go mad with it all,” she said wh
en he took her hand and led her toward the cliff path. “Hallow, where are we going? I assure you that the grass is much more comfortable than the cot in my cave.”

  He stopped at the top of the cliff, the wind from the top causing her hair to whip around her like it had a life of its own. He put his hands on her shoulders and, for a moment, reveled in the gold specks in her eyes, shining as bright as a polished coin. “They’re back, my heart.”

  “Who’s back? What—” Her eyes widened, disbelief filling them, giving his gut a wrench.

  “The Harborym have returned. This time to stay, unless we stop them before their full force descends upon Alba.”

  “But—but the rift that they used—I closed it. It was gone.”

  “They opened three more. On Aryia.” He hated to see the pain in her eyes, but there was simply no time to ease her into the truth. “One in Abet, one to the west, and one south of here. So far, they’ve only sent their monstrous soul hounds through the rifts, but it’s only a matter of time before the Harborym themselves start pouring through to decimate our land. Allegria, it sounds melodramatic to say you are our only hope, but it is just about at that point. A few Harborym we could cope with, but with three rifts spewing battalions of enemies onto Aryia ...” He shook his head.

  “We?” Her eyes studied his chest for a moment. “You and Lord Israel?”

  He took a deep breath. “The Council of Four Armies and me. I am now the Master of Kelos. I head the arcanists’ army.”

  “Kiriah’s toes. You?”

  She looked so disbelieving he had to laugh. “Yes, but I assure you it was a position I took against my will. Exodius—no, we don’t have time for that tale. We have to leave for Abet now. I have tarried far longer than I should have, and the council awaits us.”

  “No,” she said simply, and pulled her hand from his.

  “Allegria, I know you hold the council to blame for what happened to Deo—”

  “No. That is, yes, I do hold them responsible for his death, and the deaths of the other banesmen they encased in crystal and then buried deep in the ground, but that’s not what I’m objecting to. I mean no, I can’t help you.”