Энтони Райан - Queen of Fire

“Kill it!” It was Kiral, standing well back from the bound man, face bleached to near whiteness as her cat crouched at her side, fangs bared. “This is wrong!”

“The decision is mine,” Vaelin told her. “Regardless of your song.”

“We should never have done this.” Her hand moved unconsciously to the knife in her belt. “My song screams it.” She started forward, drawing her knife.

“He needs to be taken to Volar,” Vaelin said, stepping into her path. “And I will take him there.”

“You donʼt understand,” she hissed at him. “This entire journey, every life taken and lost, every battle fought. We have done everything it wants, taking it closer to its goal with every step.”

Vaelin turned to the bound man, now regarding him with placid features, free of fear or protestation. “We will make an ending, you and I,” he said, and began to laugh.

“What was your name?”

The bound man didnʼt turn at Vaelinʼs question. He sat at ease on the saddle he had been tied to, continually preoccupied with the passing landscape as Vaelin rode ahead leading his mount, eyes bright and wide as if trying to capture every detail. “My wife called me husband, my children called me father,” he said. “The only names I ever truly needed.”

Vaelin frowned in consternation. The idea of this thing fathering offspring was both absurd and appalling. “You had children?”

“Yes. Two boys and a girl.”

“What became of them?”

“I killed them.” The Ally looked up at the sky, a faint expression of wonder on his face as he spied a lone bird wheeling above, one of the broad-winged vultures common to the mountains.

“Why?” Vaelin asked.

The Allyʼs face darkened a little as he turned to him, puzzlement and anger mingling on his brow. “A fatherʼs duty is often a hard one, but cannot be shirked. A truth you will never discover, for which you should thank me.”

“So you intend to kill me?”

“You killed yourself the second you opened this body to me. The girl is right, this particular circumstance suits my purpose very well.”

“How? How does it suit your purpose?”

“You know I wonʼt tell you that, regardless of what tortures you might inflict on this flesh. Fear not though, the answers will not be long in coming.”

They rode in silence for much of the day, Orvenʼs guardsmen scouting ahead whilst the Sentar guarded the flanks and rear. Kiral kept close to Astorek, both staying far back along the line of march with his wolves close on all sides. From the continued paleness of her complexion Vaelin deduced her song hadnʼt abated. Lorkan and Cara were less afraid, regarding the Ally with a wary curiosity, though so far only Vaelin had spoken to him.

“Why donʼt you ask me?” the Ally said eventually, his eyes lingering on clouds gathering to shroud the late afternoon sun. “Surely you want to know if I caught her.”

Vaelin gripped the reins tighter, Scar issuing a faint snort as he sensed his rising anger. “Did you?” he demanded in a hoarse whisper.

“Oh yes. And greatly diverting she was too, if tiresomely stubborn. I could see why you loved her, such a bright soul is rare. Had I the time, no doubt I could have shaped her, crafted a dream rich in all the necessary temptations. I did the same for your brother, Caenis was it?”

Vaelin came to a halt, the Allyʼs mount bringing him closer until he was no more than a sword length away. He stared into the Allyʼs blank, uncaring gaze, his hands trembling.

“He had a suitably heroic death,” the Ally said after a moment. “Saving your queen from one of my servantʼs delightful traps. He would have been of great use, his gift being so strong, but thanks to you, all lost. Along with that woman you loved so dearly. Had you left me there, you might one day have heard their voices again, but now they are gone, vanished to nothing like any other soul. You did that when you brought me here, for without me there is nothing to hold them.”

“Youʼre lying,” Vaelin said, finding he had to force the words out. “Something held you in the Beyond. It could hold them too.”

“The Beyond,” the Ally repeated with a caustic sigh. “What a ridiculous name. Still, I suppose you had to call it something. My people never thought to name it, as if in denying it a title, they could wipe away the crime of creating it.”

More lies. The Beyond is surely eternal. Caenis and Dahrena will be bound there forever… The notion stirred a fresh welling of grief, and yet more unwise anger. The sword felt heavier on his back now, a constant temptation.

Vaelin turned Scar about and kicked him into a walk.

“We didnʼt know, you see,” the Ally continued, his tone reflective but also cheerful, an avuncular uncle relating past mischief to a curious nephew. “We imagined ourselves so wise. And why would we not? The marvels we crafted on this earth would have left your primitive mind reeling. But that is the eternal dilemma of curiosity, its boundlessness. Having conquered much of one world, a conquest won without battles or blood I might add, why not seek out others? The stones were the key of course, as they were the key to everything in our world of wonders. Dug from the earth and shaped, and only with the shaping was their power revealed. The power to store memory and knowledge, preserving our wisdom for all the ages, and, it transpired, the power to reach between worlds.”

“The black stone,” Vaelin said, refusing to turn.

“Yes.” The Ally laughed in surprise. “I clearly donʼt give you enough credit. Yes the black stone was to be our greatest achievement. I imagine you must be burning to know what it is.”

“I know you made it, and feared what you had made.”

“What did Lionen tell you? That it was a box to lock me in, perhaps?”

Vaelin glanced over his shoulder, finding the Allyʼs gaze more intent now, his cheerfulness displaced by calculation. So he doesnʼt know everything. “He told me your wifeʼs death had driven you to destroy the world you built, and he killed you to prevent that.”

“True enough, though I suspect it was more a matter of primal hatred. He didnʼt give me a quick death, you know.”

“I saw what you did to your people. You had much to atone for then, and yet more now.”

“Atonement? I have spent countless years without pain, pleasure or the knowledge of anything that might be called human sensation.” He reclined in the saddle, shrugging in his bonds. “Please, feel at liberty to inflict whatever torment you like upon this flesh. Iʼll take it all and ask for more.”

“What is the black stone?” Vaelin demanded, the sword shifting on his back as he rounded on the Ally. “If it is not a prison, what is it?”

The Ally glanced over at Lorkan and Cara, riding just within earshot. “In my time there were none like them. None who were born with a gift, with the power burned into their souls and passed through the bloodline for generations. Our gifts came only from the black stone.”

Touch it once and it gives… “There was no Dark in the world,” Vaelin said in realisation. “You unleashed it.”

The Allyʼs face betrayed a mix of scorn and amusement. “How little you know. There has always been power here, in the water and the earth, ancient and capricious, but beyond the reach of human knowledge. The stones brought something new, something different, a gift of power from across the chasm that divides the worlds. We took it and built wonders…”

The Ally trailed off, glancing around at the Lonak and the Gifted, his expression darkening into contemptuous disdain. “And this world is our legacy,” he went on. “Did Lionen tell you when he first received his visions he thought he was seeing the past? Some long-forgotten age of barbarism where people killed each other over mere superstition. Then he saw the ruins of my city and knew he looked upon the future. A future we built together.”