The Flame Iris Temple Read online

  Sandun and Lena went back to the village to look for provisions. Sandun was happily surprised to discover that one enterprising merchant was buying weapons. The man’s tent had what looked like more than a hundred swords, maces, and axes piled in boxes or standing in barrels. A boy, likely the merchant’s son, was cleaning the rust off a sword with a grinding wheel. Sandun sold the axe and one of the daggers, but the arms merchant pursed his lips and frowned as he examined the Kitran bow.

  “Fine workmanship, and in good condition too,” the merchant said as he strung the bow with a bowstring he fished out of a bag. Sandun could tell the bowstring was slightly too long for the bow, but he said nothing. “Most of the Kitran bows I’ve seen this month have been ruined by exposure to rain or sun, and only a master bowyer can fix them. But here, the glue is firm and no sign of cracking in any of the layers. To get the full worth of this, I’d have to sell it in Tokolas or Sasuvi. However, I only go to Jupelos because nearly all the good things have already been found. It wouldn’t be worth my while to go farther just for this one item. If you need money, I’ll buy it, but I tell you now that I won’t pay half of what it’s worth.”

  “What brings an honest merchant to this place?” Sandun asked with a slight smile.

  “This year, war is found on all eight roads. Everyone is buying weapons; even farmers in the fields wear daggers. Soon, every man in Serica will go armed. My business is more than adequate. Also, judging from your looks, you are one of the Keltens that stands at the side of the governor of Kunhalvar. It does me no harm to deal honestly with a man such as you.”

  Sandun sold the bow, the axe, and a dagger for two strings of coins. With the extra money, Sandun bought a fishing pole and tackle from a dry goods seller while Lena bought food. In the afternoon, he sat by the river and fished. The fish struck at nearly every cast, and Lena kept busy cleaning the silver trout he pulled out of the river. Sandun suspected river creatures had been drawn to Devek due to the battle. More than a few men and horses had died in the river, and many fish had come to feed on their remains.

  They spent the night on board the boat. Canvas screens were strung up along the deck, making cubbyholes for the passengers. Lena made quite a meal that evening: fresh grilled fish, corn on the cob, and lemons brought up from orchards south of Jupelos. However, Sandun did little more than taste the food. The crispy oil of the fish, the sharp tingle of lemon were vivid and pleasing, but he had no desire to eat. Lena noticed and grew concerned.

  “Why don’t you eat, my lord? Are you unwell? Have I prepared the food wrongly?” Lena appeared to be blushing; her pointed eartips quivered.

  Sandun shook his head. “No, it’s all right, the taste pleases me. But I seem to have no appetite. You have prepared the fish well.” Lena was at least partially mollified and ate her portion in silence. After a few minutes, Sandun took his fish on its plate and offered it to a young couple with a child who were sitting beside the mast. Leaving the plate with them, he stood on the strake of the boat, holding a main rope for balance and gazing upon the river.

  When would he eat again? Was this a sacrifice required for his power? The price he had to pay? What a strange thing it was. He had eaten all his life. How could he even be a human without eating food? Either he was going to have to learn to eat or he would have to learn to fake the act. Sandun returned to their enclosure, where he picked up a lemon slice and squeezed the juice out of it with his tongue. Drinking was not a problem, and the lemon juice provoked no ill effects. Feeling unsettled and worried, he lay down and closed his eyes while Lena conversed with the young mother to whom Sandun had given the fish.

  As the night ruled the sky, the spirits of the dead were more obvious to his second sight. He felt them, watched them, and swiftly learned to recognize them. They were quite different from those who were awake and alive. There were so many dead, most moving slowly, seemingly aimlessly, while others were fixed, locked down. He selected one that was wedged and pushed. The spirit resisted, fought back, but Sandun used his power and forced it to move. Like the Kitran’s spirit, a change came over it—recognition perhaps. Then it moved away.

  Sandun sent three other spirits onward, and then he rested and tried to harvest energy. But Devek was not a good place. The energy, the akela, was like dust, and he couldn’t collect much. After a time, he simply drifted. As the dawn turned the sky pale yellow, Sandun made his way to the bow of the ship and looked all around.

  The Jupol River was covered with rings as fish came to the surface to snatch the bugs that danced above the water. The current broke up the rings soon after they formed, but every second, another ten rings appeared. There was much hidden below the surface; everywhere he looked, there were secrets.

  Lena, wrapped in a ragged blanket they had rented from the ship’s quartermaster, joined him. “Last night, one of the women asked me about our reason for traveling together,” she said determinedly. “I had to tell her we were married, otherwise there would be too many questions.”

  Sandun turned that thought over in his head. Married to Lena? He was already married, very recently, to Miri Kirdar, the woman from Shila. It had been easy to forget that fact as the marriage had been arranged by Lord Vaina and they had spent little time together. Where was Miri now? Back in Tokolas, or had she decided he was dead and so had returned home? He hoped she was still in Tokolas.

  Meanwhile, Lena was too old to be his daughter and too young to be his wife.

  “I am taking you to Jupelos. With luck, your brother will be there. If not, the city prefect will take care of you.”

  She nodded. “Yes, my lord. I only said it because I needed to say something.”

  Lena’s spirit looked different when she said that, but just then the first mate called, “All aboard!” The crew made ready to depart, a few more passengers walked up the gangplank, and within a minute, the boat was traveling down the Jupol River.

  The journey proved uneventful. Sandun said little and spent his time watching the people on the boat, both with his eyes and with his second sight. The passengers were divided: about half were refugees, fleeing from the valley around Kemeklos toward the safety of Kunhalvar province; the rest were grieving parents of dead soldiers, who had come north to Devek to pray for their sons. Most had collected a lump of earth from the large burial mound. This they would bring back to their family grave, where it could be properly interred.

  The crew had made this trip several times over the last two months. Once Sandun heard the captain talking to a man about the prospect of dredging the river so that it would be feasible to sail all the way to Kemeklos, as it had been a decade ago.

  “What’s in Kemeklos now?” said the passenger.

  “It will be rebuilt,” the captain replied. “Kemeklos was once the capital. People will come back.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe, like Solt’varkas, it will fall into decay. Tokolas is the city everyone seems to want to live in these days.”

  Most everyone gave Sandun a wide berth, which suited him well enough. Lena made excuses for him to the others. He sat and watched the world pass by, both with his eyes and in his mind. The second world continued to amaze him—he could hardly understand what he “saw.” Hills, farmland, the river, villages: they usually had some representation in the second world, but it was inconsistent, indistinct. People and hills were the only sure matches in the second world. If he saw a person, he could find a matching spirit or mahla in the second world. She had taught him some ancient words to describe the second world, but since she mostly communicated by thoughts, words were not that important to Ajh.

  There were few stuck spirits once they left the battlefield behind. On rare occasions when he saw grave sites near villages, he saw no ghosts, but then ghosts were harder to see in the daylight, and when night fell or it rained, he couldn’t see the burial sites.

  Sandun had to learn how to pretend to eat. He found little stratagems for giving
the food Lena made for him to the other refugees. He rationalized that his deception was best for everyone.

  Still, after three days, Sandun was eager to get off the boat. He realized that his need for sleep wasn’t growing, and it occurred to him that he could walk on a road much faster than the boat would travel since the captain had them tie up at the shore in the evening as soon as the stars came out. Sandun didn’t know just how long he could walk each day, but he aimed to find out.

  Jupelos was much busier than he remembered from the last time he had seen it, and everyone seemed happier. No longer a backwater town, Jupelos was now the northern center of power of Lord Vaina’s growing domain. A strong army defended the border; thanks to the defeat of Nilin Ulim’s horde, it could well be one of the safest regions in all Serica. Judging from the multitude of tents and crude wooden houses outside the city walls, thousands of refugees from Kemeklos had come to live around Jupelos. No doubt many would continue downriver, but many would stay, close to home and protected from bandits and the mercenaries who had once fought for Nilin Ulim.

  Sandun decided he would search for news of Lena’s brother at the large Red Crane Army camp just outside of the city. He had been there once before, and he thought there was a good chance someone could help. Although he could go to the government office and request assistance, he felt a certain reluctance. He had a task to do, a mission from her, and nothing could be allowed to get in his way. Yes, he was going to Tokolas, but that was second on his task list, and he didn’t want to explain to the Jupelos prefect why he wasn’t going to see Lord Vaina immediately. It was possible no one cared whether he was alive or dead, but he suspected that was not the case.

  As it happened, luck was with them that day. The guard at the camp recognized the name Lena gave him. “Enar Varalia? I know him. He was one of the Red Swords assigned to our unit a month ago. He mentioned having a sister. Hey, Commander!”

  His commanding officer came over with an easy gait.

  “This girl here says she is Enar’s sister, Lena. I remember him talking about her. Said she’d gone missing, and here she is.”

  The commander smiled broadly. “Well, that’s good news on this fine day. A brother-and-sister reunion. Wonderful! I told him to wait and not go north just yet and look at that! I was proved right.” The commander laughed loudly for all to hear. “I’ll escort you to see him, personally, Miss Varalia.” Eyeing Sandun, he said, “With your permission of course, sir. Who are you?”

  “My name is Sandun, Sandun of Kelten. I found Lena lost in the hills south of Kemeklos, and so I helped to bring her here.”

  “Sandun? Not the Sandun? The governor’s Kelten friend?”

  Sandun nodded. “The same. I’m on my way to Tokolas, but I’m happy to leave Lena in good hands, Commander.”

  Turning to Lena, Sandun gave her most of the money. “I have to go now, Lena. Thank you for your company these last few days. If you need anything, just send word to the Kelten embassy in Tokolas. I’ll do what I can.”

  Lena stood there for a moment in indecision, and then she threw her arms around Sandun. “Thank you,” she said, fighting back tears. “Thank you for everything. I’m so happy, I don’t know why I’m crying.”

  Sandun patted the girl’s back. “It’s a happy day. Tears will wash away the clouds and let the sun out. You go find your brother. Let me know how things work out, all right?”

  Lena stepped back and wiped her face with her jacket sleeve. “I can never repay you, my lord. You saved my life.”

  “I am repaid in full. Go and live your life. Be happy. You have my blessing.”

  The commander took Lena’s hand. “Come along, Miss Varalia. Your brother is this way. The Lord Sandun has important work to attend to.”

  Lena turned and walked with the commander; she looked back, and Sandun waved at her. He found this parting curiously painful. They hadn’t spoken much on the boat, and Sandun had deliberately kept Lena at a distance, but she was the first human he had met after Ajh had changed him. She was living proof that humans could be good, both in their outward seeming and their spirit.

  Sandun did not go to see the prefect of Jupelos. Instead, he skirted around the edge of the town, keeping to himself. To avoid notice, he bought a wide-brimmed hat, made of straw, from a peddler who had what looked like twenty gourds hanging from his pack. They banged against each other, making a funny clop-clop sound, which was why Sandun noticed the peddler in the first place.

  Once Sandun hit the so-called buffalo trail, he kept on going, even as night fell. The moon was a waxing crescent, and it set a few hours after sunset. But he kept on walking. The buffalo trail was smooth and broad, while the stars provided enough light for him to walk. He stopped only rarely to drink some water. As he sat beside one of the streams, after midnight, Sandun realized he should also have bought one of the peddler’s empty gourds.

  He reached the town of Olitik before dawn, walking through new-planted fields of young winter-wheat, all tipped with bright droplets of dew. Sandun remembered the fight in Olitik, but the memory seemed in miniature, like an illustration in a book he had read years ago. He sat beside the stream flowing down from the hills above and watched as the village gradually came to life. Instead of taking the horse trail to Essebeg, he scrambled alongside the stream; it would lead to the lake and then the hidden city of the Piksies.

  Chapter Two

  Sky’s Edge

  The sun hung low in the sky by the time Sandun reached the door to the lost city of the Piksies of Serica. He had been spotted as he approached the lake under the great half cliff. The men of the village of Essebeg confronted him with unsmiling and wary faces, but Sandun understood why—he looked very different from the last time they had seen him. Before, he had been wearing plate mail and riding in the company of the Knights of Serica. Today he came alone, carrying nothing but his sword. Even his face was obscured by his beard.

  However, he greeted them with friendly words and was able to dredge up some of their names. Soon, the village leader, Gorgi, acknowledged Sandun and they all relaxed, resting their spears beside the fences of their fields. Gorgi told Sandun that it was commonly believed that Sandun had been lost in Kemeklos.

  “True,” Sandun replied. “But I am lost no longer.”

  When asked why he had returned to Essebeg, Sandun told them, “I am going to make the Ghost Wolf leave this place.”

  Their reaction made Sandun chuckle. If he had proposed to transform their lake into quicksilver, they would have thought him equally mad. The men of Essebeg looked at each other and shook their heads. “Gone crazy” and “Ghost Wolf is as old as the hills” were some of the comments they made to each other, as though he could not understand what they said.

  Gorgi invited Sandun to come and join his family for the midday meal. Sandun agreed to share a mug of the local pine beer but nothing more. “It may be difficult to send Ghost Wolf away,” he told them. To forestall any offers of food, he added that he had been fasting for a day to purify his mind and spirit. This at least made sense to Gorgi, and as a result, Sandun spent an hour listening to the former soldier recount his experiences during the Northern Expedition while his wife spun wool and his children listened.

  Sandun asked about his friends, the Knights of Serica. Gorgi recounted the bare bones of what he knew: the knights had gone into the burning city of Kemeklos and come out again. He didn’t meet Sandun’s eye, and it took no skill to see Gorgi was troubled by something in recounting that tale—but what?

  Sandun did not inquire further. He had a task to accomplish, so he thanked Gorgi for his hospitality and left the village.

  The shaman of Essebeg had been waiting for him outside. In the afternoon’s light, she looked old and worn; her necklace of many coins seemed to be pulling her head down toward the ground. In thickly accented Serice, the shaman asked him if he was going to try to drive Ghost Wolf from the moun
tain. He told her that he would. The shaman looked up at him for a long time as she fingered her own metal disk, which he now recognized as an ancient piece of jewelry made by the Piksies. Then she said something unexpected: “What will Essebeg become when Ghost Wolf is gone?” Without waiting for an answer to that strange question, the shaman turned and walked back down the street.

  A few young boys, seeing a good excuse to skip their afternoon chores, followed Sandun as he made his way to the secret entrance of the ancient underground Piksie city. There was no easy path, or if there was one, he didn’t know it. But difficult paths and scrambling over broken boulders no longer posed much of a problem for Sandun. He drew on the power from the hidden world and kept going without pause, up and over rocks and fallen trees, and soon he was alone, for none could keep up with him. After an hour, he stood on the ancient stone platform in front of the doorway. This was the place where he and Kagne had carved an opening in the rock using Basil’s stone-cutting knife.

  Sandun could see little or no change from when he had last stood there. Pieces of sharp-edged stone that they had cut out from the door littered the ground in front of the rock face like wood chips left by a beaver after it had gnawed through a sapling. The rough hole the two men had carved into the stone revealed a window into night. Looking at the opening with a measure of detachment, Sandun found it hard to understand why he had been willing to go inside the first time. That had been a strange hour, and he had been in a fey mood. And yet, without that, he and Kagne would never have forged the spirit connection that allowed Kagne to find him in the middle of Nilin Ulim’s camp a week later. And without Kagne’s help, he would not be alive today.