Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

The first blow landed just above Gwenna’s ear, a flash of bright red pain. She turned, shocked, thinking that one of the Urghul had leapt into the gully, only to discover the young legionary staring at her, a stick in each hand, knuckles white.

“I’m sorry,” he cried. A splash of vomit soiled the front of his tunic and stained the rough dirt before him. Tears, whether of remorse or terror, slicked his cheeks. “I’m sorry, ” he sobbed again, and then, with a mindless fury, started raining down the blows.

It took Gwenna a moment to adjust, and the sticks connected twice more, once just above the eye, the other a glancing blow to the shoulder. The pain was sharp but shallow, the sort of pain she’d felt a thousand times before when smashing a finger between an anchor and the gunwale, or ripping free a blackened toenail, or taking a stunner to the shoulder. Gwenna herself would be hard-pressed to kill someone quickly with those sticks, and the panicked young legionary was striking out madly in his terror, blindly. She raised her hands, blocked two blows in quick succession, timed the third, caught the stick before it could connect, twisted out and away, breaking the man’s grip, and then she had a weapon of her own.

The soldier paused, stunned, staring at his empty hand in mute incomprehension. He raised his eyes to Gwenna and moaned, a pitiful, helpless sound, before redoubling his attack. With one weapon already in hand it was a trivial matter to defend against the fresh assault. She swatted aside a blow aimed for her chest, inclined her head to slip beneath a high swing, leaned back as far as the earth would allow, inviting the youth to overextend, and then she had the second stick as well. It was easy, so pathetically easy.

The Urghul were shrieking like seabirds, a high keening sharp as a point driving straight through Gwenna’s ears and into her brain. The twin fires had grown even larger, the one in front scorching her face, the one behind burning through her blacks. The unarmed soldier spread his hands wide in supplication.

“I’m sorry,” he cried. “I didn’t want to hit you. Please. Please. You’re Kettral. I’m just a legionary. You’re the ’Kent-kissing Kettral! Please .”

Gwenna held her attack for a moment. She had slipped into a high Elendrian guard without even thinking about it-an absurd gesture. The idiot buried across from her had probably never even heard of the Elendrian guard. He was just an Annurian soldier captured while serving his empire, while trying to do his job. His only preparation for the Urghul would have been lurid tales told in the mess hall and barracks. No one had trained him for this.

Gwenna glanced up at their captors, at the uncountable flashing blue eyes, the pale faces glistening with sweat. Firelight lurched over the bones of the dead and the flesh of the living alike, plunging some figures into shadow, garishly illuminating others. Blood throbbed in her ears, flame on her face. There was no way out, no escape.

“Ah, fuck,” she muttered.

“No,” the soldier said, shaking his head slowly, seeing the decision in her eyes.

Gwenna gritted her teeth, then lashed out high and right. The feint worked, drawing the legionary’s guard wide, and she took the opening. The Urghul wanted pain, an agony built from a thousand punishing blows, to feed their sick god.

Well, she thought as she plunged the tip of the stick through the soldier’s eye, driving it deep, deeper, twisting the weapon as the youth spasmed, jerked, then slumped forward, utterly still, the fuckers will have to settle for death.

Her throat was raw as she wrenched the stick free. She was screaming, she realized, but the sound was lost in the awful sheet of Urghul screams. She was sobbing, but the heat of the fire had seared away her tears.

Kaden crashed out of the kenta soaked and gasping for breath, lungs heaving in great desperate gulps of clean air, limbs leaden and useless. His mind registered only that he had moved from a frigid wet darkness into a warm day brilliant as the sun, and for a few heartbeats he allowed himself to simply lie on the soft grass, still swaddled in the vaniate, drinking in the sweet sea breeze. A few feet away he could hear Triste retching onto the ground, her body struggling to force out the salt water at the same time as she was trying to breathe. Kiel’s own breaths were quieter, more measured, and after a moment Kaden could hear the Csestriim rising to his feet.

“Quickly,” he said, keeping his voice low. “This is only the hub linking the gates, and Rampuri Tan will not kill all of them.”

“They can’t follow,” Triste gasped. “Not the way we came.”

“They will not have to. When they have dealt with Tan, they will realize where we went, and they will come through the gate after us. We have to be well gone from here when that happens.”

Kaden nodded, rising unsteadily to his feet. He recognized the island, the ring of slender arches around the perimeter, although it felt like years since he had last stood upon it. Since then … He shook his head, cutting off the thought. Best not to think on the past, on what it would mean for the Ishien to deal with Tan. The vaniate wavered. Best to move forward.

He glanced around the green sward. The gate from Assare, he knew, but the writing above the others meant nothing.

“Which way?”

“Annur?” Kiel asked.

Kaden nodded.

The Csestriim indicated an arch a dozen paces distant. Kaden helped Triste to her feet, helped her stumble across the rough ground, watched her vanish as she stepped once more into the kenta, then followed her through, moving from bright light into a dry, dusty darkness. For a moment he just stood, waiting for his eyes to adjust. When they did not, he let the vaniate slough away. His limbs were still weak from the lack of air, still trembling. His burning irises illuminated little more than his hand before his face.

“Where are we?”

“Underground,” Kiel replied. “In a section of Annur long forgotten. The Ishien know of this place, but no one else.”

“Let’s go,” Triste said, her voice tight as a bowstring. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Follow precisely in my footsteps,” Kiel replied. “The Ishien have set traps around this gate, and there are other dangers in the forgotten tunnels beneath the city.”

The three of them spent the next hour winding their way through nearly absolute darkness. At several junctures, Kaden caught sight of stacks of bones-femurs, skulls, heaps of fingers dry and brittle as kindling-stretching back into the cavernous black. Triste kept a hand on Kaden’s shoulder. He could feel her trembling, though whether with cold or fear or the lingering pain of the wounds the Ishien had inflicted he wasn’t sure. Kiel showed no hesitation as he moved through the darkness.

“How can you see?” Triste asked at one point.

“I don’t need to see,” the Csestriim replied. “I have the map in my head.”

“That’s impossible,” she replied.

“Ask Kaden.”

Kaden tried to imagine the vast network of tunnels, discovering to his surprise that he’d been making a map of his own since they left the kenta, some diligent portion of his mind toiling away marking each branch, each fork, each cavern through which they passed.

“Memory,” Kiel said, “is a skill like anything else. It can be honed.”

The words were true enough, but when they finally shoved aside a slab of stone and stepped blinking from the darkness into blinding light, Kaden discovered anew the limits of his memory. They stood in a green leafy cemetery wedged between walls and buildings atop a low hill. While Kiel muscled the stone slab back into place, Kaden just stared. That the Ishien were behind them, he had no doubt. They needed to be away from the graveyard, and fast, but for the space of a few heartbeats, he found himself unable to move, nailed to the spot as he breathed in the sea salt and smoky air of Annur.