Dreams of Fire and Gods 2: Fire Read online

  Copyright

  Published by

  Harmony Ink Press

  5032 Capital Circle SW

  Ste 2, PMB# 279

  Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA

  [email protected] http://harmonyinkpress.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any

  resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely

  coincidental.

  Dreams of Fire and Gods: Fire Copyright © 2013 by James Erich All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

  photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Harmony Ink Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Ste 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA. [email protected]

  Cover Art by Paul Richmond http://www.paulrichmondstudio.com ISBN: 978-1-62380-447-3

  Library ISBN: 978-1-62380-918-8 Digital ISBN: 978-1-62380-448-0

  Printed in the United States of America First Edition

  March 2013

  Glossary

  SOMEwords in Tövon (TAW-vohn), the language spoken in the kingdom of Dasak:

  Note: In addition to the unusual characters ö (pronounced “aw”) and ü (pronounced like the “u” in the English word “put”), Tövon also differs from English in that there are no plurals. Whether an object is singular or plural is derived from context.

  demen (DEH-mehn): nightmarish creatures composed of bits and pieces of dead animals and people.

  denök (dehn-AWK): a rabbit warren. Fromden (“den” or “warren”) and ök (“rabbit”).

  dönz (DAWNZ): “of,” used in the context of family names, as in Sael dönz Menaük—Sael of the Menaük family.

  ghet (GHEHT): a large, lumbering animal used in farm work, generally considered genial, but not overly intelligent.

  ghusat (GHUH-suht): an enormous freshwater serpent with horns along the length of its body.

  gönd (GAWND): a game of chance, in which small wooden sticks and disks are cast upon the floor and the outcome of the “battle” is tallied up according to complicated rules.

  kanun (KAH-nuhn): a tall tree with broad leaves and hard, round seeds. kikid (KIH-kihd): a speckled, pheasantlike game bird that nests in fields. kim (KIHM): large fish, approximately the size of a medium fishing boat. There are both fresh-water and saltwater species.

  komid-minid (KOH-mihd-MIH-nihd): “banded flower.” A white, iris-like flower with metallic gold veins in the petals.

  makek (mah-KEHK): “chief” or “supreme.” The suffix “-makek” can be applied to most political or social classes to designate the highest ranking member.

  mat (MAHT): town. nagaing (nah-GAH-ing): a mythical creature that is half human woman and half fish.

  nened (NEH-nehd): “glowbugs.” Small beetles with glowing yellow-green abdomens.

  nimen (NIH-mehn): “lover.” Sometimes “spouse,” but only in the context of a romantic pairing, as opposed to a spouse in an arranged marriage.

  nud (NUHD): a penis, often implying a small one.

  rawuk (RAW-uhk): an herb with mild analgesic properties, especially in the root. People often chew the pleasant-tasting root to relax.

  stosam (STAW-suhm): an ale infused with herbs. The herbs vary from town to town, giving each region distinct flavors.

  ten’nak (TEHN-nahk): a carnivorous plant that uses thought-sensing and illusion magic to lure animals and people into the swamp to drown them and feed off their life force.

  tondekan (TOHN-dehk-uhn): the title and lands associated with the position of dekan. This always includes one major city, and often includes small villages nearby.

  veikit (VEY-ih-kiht): the hereditary title and lands of the vek. It only refers to the East Kingdom. Theveikit is further broken down into tondekan, as is the West Kingdom.

  zeinimen (ZEY-ih-nih-mehn): “lovebonded.” Also “married,” but only applicable to marriages of love. It would not be applied to a marriage for social or political reasons.

  SOME words in Osyeh (OH-syeh), the language of the Taaweh: Note: Osyeh is characterized by long vowels, in which the vowel sound is held for two beats. Osyeh does have plurals, but speakers of Tövon tend to use the singular “Taaweh” to refer to both one Taaweh and multiple members of the Taawehnai.

  fya-iinyeh (fyah-EE-een-yeh): close friend or companion, fya meaning “close.”

  iinu (EE-ee-noo): “cherished.”

  iinyeh (EE-een-yeh): friend or ally.

  Kiishya (KEE-ee-shyah): “ember,” what the Taaweh call their sun

  Omu (OH-moo): “water drop,” what the Taaweh call their moon

  tyeh (CHYEH): “greatest.” A commonly used superlative.

  tyeh-areh (chyeh-AH-reh): “great mist.” The mist that marks the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead.

  tyeh-iinyeh (chyeh-EE-een-yeh): “greatest friend” or “lover,” in the context of the person one is closest to. Similar to the Dasak word “nimen.” To the Taaweh, this is the closest possible emotional bond between two people.

  tyeh shyochya (chyeh-SHYOH-chyah): “great joy,” a standard Taaweh greeting

  shaa (SHAH-ah): “lord” or “man.” The male ruler of the Taaweh is the Iinu Shaa, the Cherished Lord.

  shavi (SHAH-vee): “lady” or “woman.” The female ruler of the Taaweh is the Iinu Shavi, the Cherished Lady.

  taaweh (TAH-ah-weh): “guardian.” zouvya (ZOH-oh-vyah): “lake.” This word migrated into the language of the humans in Dasak as zovya (ZOH-vyah) and is used in many place names.

  Notes

  TIMESof Day in the kingdom of Dasak:

  The kingdom follows the temple practice of dividing the day into four “hours,” beginning at the following major phases of the Eye of Atnu (what we would call the “sun”):

  Penent—sunrise

  Cabbon—midday

  Nemom—sunset

  Manduccot—midnight

  These are of variable length, according to the time of year. They are further bisected into “early” and “late” halves. There are also “hours” associated with the Eye of Druma (the moon), but they are only used by the ömem and samöt.

  POLITICALpositions within the kingdom: Since the Tövon words for different political positions and classes in the kingdom are unfamiliar, they are laid out here:

  komük (KOH-muhk): emperor. The ruler of the entire kingdom. The position is hereditary, though dynasties have changed through assassination and wars.

  vek (VEHK): the emperor’s regent in the East Kingdom. Though he answers to the emperor, in practice the isolation of the East Kingdom gives him immense power and autonomy.

  dekan (DEHK-uhn): the ruler of a city or region dominated by a city. ömem (AW-mehm): a woman allied to the goddess Imen, who is granted the ability to see anything illuminated by the Eyes and trained in healing magic. Ömem cannot foresee the future. The ömem also refer to themselves as the Sisterhood.

  vönan (VAW-nuhn): a mage allied to the god Caednu and granted the ability to use fire magic.

  caedan (CAH-eh-duhn): a priest of the Stronni. Caedan are primarily scholars and clergy with little magical ability.

  samöt (sah-MAWT): an assassin guided by the Sight of the ömem. Their larger organization is referred to as the Brotherhood. The wordsamöt means “dagger.”

  Chapter 1

  THEsign above the door to the fortuneteller’
s shop read “Madame Nedegh” in gaudy yellow letters against a purple background. The narrow street outside appeared to be empty, and Donegh could hear the old woman’s voice in his head telling him it was safe to enter. He waited a bit longer in the shadows for clouds to obscure the Eye before slipping from the alley to the door, cradling his injured arm within the folds of his dark-gray cloak. Donegh opened the door quickly and slipped inside.

  “Very dramatic,” old Nedegh said testily, “but I told you it was safe.” “I rely on my own eyes and ears as well as yours,” the young man replied. Nedegh snorted. She was a short, rotund woman with a penchant for too much eye makeup and a jet-black hair color that no longer seemed appropriate for her aged face. When she moved, it was to the sound of her copper hoop bracelets jangling. “You look young,” she commented.

  Donegh was used to that comment coming from others—he’d lived on the streets for so long, he no longer had any idea how old he really was, but he probably hadn’t seen more than seventeen summers and his round cheeks and wide, dark eyes gave him a childlike appearance. But he had no doubt that Nedegh knew all about him. She was just baiting him.

  “I’ve killed three men,” he replied. “Three!” the old woman mocked. “My, how terrifying! Did you kill them all in their sleep?”

  He merely glared at her without deigning to respond. He knew what she was thinking—that he’d been sent on this mission because he was expendable, not because he was expected to succeed. She wasn’t the only one who thought that, Donegh knew. No doubt others had been sent as well. But Donegh had every intention of succeeding in this mission and many more to follow.

  “Have a seat,” Nedegh said, eyeing his wounded arm. “I’ll fetch some healing formula.”

  Donegh did as he was told, taking a chair at the only table in the room. The table held a scrying mirror, obviously used for customers. He found it absurd that the ömem would try to convince anyone she could foretell the future, and even more absurd that people believed it. But her Sight gave her the ability to watch her customers whenever the Eye of Atnu was in the sky during the day, or the Eye of Druma at night, and no doubt she was able to put on quite a convincing show. Few townspeople fully understood the Sight, and it would be easy to fool them into thinking that an ömem could see the future as well as everything going on in the present.

  Regardless, Donegh found it sad that a royal ömem had come to these circumstances. But he kept that thought to himself, buried behind the mental wall all assassins learned to put up at an early age. Any thought not compartmentalized like this risked being overheard by the ömem.

  “Take off your tunic,” Nedegh commanded as she returned to the room, carrying a bowl of steaming water and a red-tinted glass phial, as well as a clean rag tucked under one arm. She set everything down on the table and uncorked the phial.

  Donegh was just coming into his manhood, and he still felt awkward about baring himself in front of strangers, especially women. But he obeyed the old woman and removed his cloak and bloodstained tunic. “Do you know what it was?” he asked her. “That… thing that attacked me in the forest?”

  Nedegh handed the open phial to him and nodded for him to drink. Then she shook her head as she dipped the rag into the hot water and began to clean his wound. “The Dead Forest is poisoned with ancient magic,” she murmured, concentrating on her task. “There’s little point trying to make sense out of anything you come across there. Just pray you haven’t been tainted by it.”

  Donegh swallowed the syrupysweet liquid and set the empty glass phial on the table. “Could I become like it?” he asked. The creature had been revolting, seemingly assembled from the corpses of deer and bears… except for one arm. It hadn’t needed an arm, since it already had four legs, but it had an extra arm jutting out at an odd angle from one shoulder—the withered arm of a man, its skin gray and fingernails blue, as if it were dead. But it had moved, clawing at Donegh’s face. Worse, the thing had cast some sort of paralysis spell on him, and only the searing pain of teeth digging into his forearm had brought him back to his senses and given him the strength to slash his way free.

  Nedegh screwed up her face in disgust as the extent of the wound became clear to her. “Let’s hope not. You should have stopped in Old Mat’Zovya and allowed Marik to tend to this.”

  “The Emperor doesn’t trust Marik.” Nedegh barked out a short, bitter laugh. “The Emperor shouldn’t trust Marik. She’d run him through if she had half a chance. But what is that to you? You’re samöt!”

  Donegh knew that belonging to the Brotherhood of assassins supposedly guaranteed his help from the ömem Sisterhood, but the thought of walking into a camp full of bandits and murderers while he was too injured to defend himself hadn’t appealed to him. He’d chosen to skirt the ruins of the old city and walk the remaining few leagues to Mat’Zovya, where he was guaranteed food and shelter.

  “It’s infected,” Nedegh said, clucking at him in irritation.

  “Can you heal it?”

  The old woman looked offended. “Of course I can heal it. But you’d do well to stay here a few days to recover.” “I don’t have that much time,” Donegh said. “I have to cross the lake.” He was reluctant to divulge any more of his mission, even to an ömem— especially to one who’d previously been part of the vek’s court. But it wasn’t easy to keep information from the Sisterhood. Nedegh regarded him grimly.

  “Once you enter Harleh plain,” she said, “you’ll be on your own. No ömem can see into that valley, and none of us will be able to communicate with you. I suggest you take the time necessary to regain your strength.”

  THEentire valley was shrouded in an eerie bluish light while storm clouds swirled overhead, as if a tornado were forming. But on the ground, everything was still. Only a mild breeze stirred Sael’s blond hair as he stood on the battlements of Harleh keep, looking out at the clouds and the impenetrable forest that had suddenly sprung up from the valley floor beneath them a fortnight ago. The forest had initially overrun the plain to the west of Harleh, but over the intervening days and nights, it had spread, until the circular city-keep resided in the middle of a vast forest stretching out in all directions between the mountains in the north and the rolling hills to the south. Messengers from Sael’s father in Worlen Castle to the east claimed that the forest—and the cloud cover—came to an abrupt end about ten leagues in that direction.

  Rising up out of the western forest were slender stone towers, sparkling with thousands of yellow-green lights— windows, most likely, though no one in Harleh had been able to get close enough to see much of the mysterious city that had risen fully formed from the floor of the valley during a battle. On the eve of that battle, as the emperor’s men prepared to lay siege to Harleh Keep, the great plain that lay in the basin of the valley had been just that—a plain. The battle had been short, brought to a halt by the sudden appearance of roots and whole trees pushing up through the ground in the middle of the battlefield. And then all the emperor’s soldiers and sorcerers had mysteriously fallen into a deep sleep. The soldiers of Harleh had collected the sleeping bodies, and they were still unconscious, sheltered under large pavilions near the keep’s outer wall. They appeared healthy, though they had been unable to take food or water for two weeks.

  “Your Lordship,” one of Sael’s guards called to him, “Master Geilin requests an audience.”

  Sael turned to see his old mentor— now the chief mage of Harleh, since Sael had been forced to give up his apprenticeship and step into his brother’s shoes as dekan of Harleh— waiting patiently by the steps. Well, Sael thought, General Meik is waiting for me in the council room, anyway.

  He moved away from the crenulated outer wall and strode across the stone walkway. “Master Geilin,” Sael said, restraining himself from bowing as he would have done just weeks ago. He settled instead for a polite nod.

  Geilin added to his discomfort by bowing formally. “Your Lordship.”

  The old man was dressed in a fine, richl
y embroidered gold-and-white robe suitable to the vönan makek of a royal house, his short white beard was immaculately groomed, and his head had recently been shaved to better show off the tattoo of the Eye of Atnu on his scalp. But Geilin did not look well. His eyes were sunken and he moved with an air of fatigue that worried Sael.

  The young dekan didn’t need to ask the cause of Geilin’s ill health. Sael felt it too. For two weeks, the supernatural cloud cover had prevented the Eye from shining down upon them during the day, and all those who worked with magic were suffering from this. Vönan drew their strength and power from the Eyes —Atnu during the day, and to a lesser extent, Druma at night—as did the priests and the ömem. Harleh was now home to twenty fire mages who could no longer cast spells.

  “I have been requested to ask for an audience,” Geilin informed Sael.

  “Requested by whom?”

  “The vönan, the ömem, and the caedan,” Geilin replied. Then he chuckled and added, with mock seriousness, “I can’t recall the last time t he caedan grandmaster agreed to a meeting with the ömem, so we know the situation must be dire.” The temple priests—caedan—had a rivalry with the ömem that stretched back six hundred years to the assassination of Emperor Aghren and the birth of the order of the samöt.

  “They want me to make the clouds go away, no doubt.”

  Geilin gave him a small, commiserating smile. “I would suggest granting the audience, Your Lordship, if for no other purpose than to show your concern.”

  “Of course,” Sael said. It was an annoying waste of time, since he could do nothing about the situation—at least, not until the Taaweh chose to reappear in Harleh or grant someone entrance to their forest city. Only they could undo the spell they’d cast on the valley. But Sael was learning that much of his function in this crisis was to keep the peace. The people were on the edge of panic, having no idea what the appearance of this forest around the keep meant, and if they were in any danger. The mysterious city in the west terrified them. Sael had been forced to post guards at the gates to prevent a mass exodus to Worlen. Even at that, he was fairly certain several of the families from outlying farms had made the journey. But now that the forest lay to the east as well, few people were brave enough to venture walking through it anyway.