Ruggiero pushed aside a tent flap, taking off his sword belt and laying Gentleness, his long-suffering angel blade, aside.
“You summoned me?” he asked. The man at the small desk glanced at him, then resumed writing for several minutes before finally putting down his quill and turning to look directly at Ruggiero.
“You saw to your horse?” Ferrau asked. Ruggiero dipped his head.
“Of course,” he said. Ferrau stood, smiling.
“Well met, friend,” he said. “I had worried that your time on the continent would leave you little stomach for the desert.”
“Frontino was certainly glad of your shelter,” Ruggiero said, and Ferrau laughed.
“My servants will know better than to overload him with oats, but he can have as much hay as he likes, so long as he is here. Did you find the oasis of Ceylon?”
“Exactly where you described it,” Ruggiero said. “But tell me, what have you found that drove you to such lengths?”
Ferrau indicated a cot, where Ruggiero sat as Ferrau regained his chair. The dark-skinned man rested his bearded chin on his fists and stared hard at Ruggiero.
“No. Even now, I cannot bring myself to do it.”
Ruggiero pressed his lips.
“My friend, if you would send Hermus to me and ask me to come away from the war, all the way here, we both know that it is both important and that you will tell me. Now or in the morning, you will tell me.”
Ferrau grinned.
“Exactly so,” he said, standing. “So, for now, wine and stories. Tell me, how goes the war?”
Ruggiero allowed his friend to pull him back to his feet and they went out into the rapidly-cooling desert air where a man in a turban was kindling a fire. Ruggiero didn’t like to talk of the war, because he had close friends on both sides of it. His own wife was fighting against his father, and eventually Ruggiero felt that he was going to have to choose a side once and for all.
“Land comes and goes between the sides,” he said as Ferrau took a stool from another servant and set it out for Ruggiero to sit on, perching on the edge of his own stool and putting his elbows on his knees.
“Who will take it? Do you know?”
Ruggiero shook his head. Ferrau grinned.
“You don’t even know who you want to win. Tell me, how is your beautiful wife?”
Ruggiero smiled, just watching the fire as the flames grew up through the dry kindling. There wasn’t enough wood out here to burn, so they kept themselves warm at night with plenty of blankets and they cooked their food on dried animal dung.
Even now, as he watched, a man brought out a tripod with a kettle and fed it dried leaves. The southerners drank tea imported from places Ruggiero had never heard of; his father loved the drink.
Ruggiero accepted a small plate with a sweetened dessert on it, even warm, it had a cooling feel in his mouth, and a subtle spice put a heat in his veins.
“You haven’t been sacrificing as much as I’d feared, out here,” Ruggiero said.
“It’s all trivialities, my friend,” Ferrau said. “You know as well as I do that the token comforts are nothing compared to a real sense of home.”
“Tell me, then,” Ruggiero said. “What brings my friend Ferrau out to the middle of the sands, then to drag me out as well?”
Ferrau looked at the flames, settling a bit lower as a woman came to pour tea. Ruggiero shook his hands, declining, and a man offered him a skin of something; he smelled wine and he smiled a silent yes to this.
“There are stories that only the desert knows,” Ferrau said quietly, sipping his tea and then setting it aside on a sturdy rug. “Secrets, perhaps, that only the wind here could keep. Whole cities that rose, climbing up above the sand for a time, only to be reclaimed and vanish, just the dunes.” He looked at Ruggiero with a sharp expression of interest. “There is a rumor of a great, powerful city in these lands. Everyone knew where it was, everyone could find it, but when the queen died, the sand took it back, along with all of its treasures. How many men would be willing to dig through a mountain of sand to find it, but,” he motioned with his arm, “which mountain? When the desert reclaims a place, it is well and truly lost.”
Ruggiero sipped his wine. Ferrau didn’t drink, but he kept good wine, anyway.
Ferrau looked away again, settled out over his knees.
“Djinn,” he said. Ruggiero looked at him, but Ferrau didn’t seem inclined to say more, immediately, and Ruggiero waited. He’d ridden a long way to get here; he didn’t need answers immediately if they were going to cost Ferrau. He could be patient.
“Tell me of your wife,” Ferrau said.
“She is strong,” Ruggiero said. “Smart. As skilled with a sword as a lance. A capable rider, and a lovely singer.”
Ferrau snorted.
“You describe a battle brother.”
“She is that.”
Ferrau shook his head.
“And what did she think of you coming to me, simply because I asked?”
Ruggiero looked away.
“The battle is never simple.”
“She doesn’t know?”
“I will tell her,” Ruggiero said quickly. “It isn’t a secret. It’s simply…”
“Your worlds take you apart,” Ferrau said. “And what of your father?”
“Margano hasn’t come down from his tower in more than a year,” Ruggiero said. “I don’t know if I will see him again before he dies.”
Ferrau stroked the edges of his beard with his thumb and the knuckle of his forefinger.
“Your father believes in his work.”
“And very little else,” Ruggiero answered. Ferrau gave him a dark look, and Ruggiero took another drink of his wine.
“You are my friend,” he said after another moment. “I did not hesitate to come when you asked.”
“That is the truth,” Ferrau said. “What do you know of djinn?”
“A breath and whispers,” Ruggiero said. “In truth, I don’t even know what the word means.”
Ferrau nodded.
“In the oldest of our stories, they are benevolent. They carry great wisdom and great insight, and like many creatures of age and wisdom, they are dangerous because they do not tolerate fools.” The corner of his mouth twitched in a sneering anger. “I’ve found the truth to be less… flattering.”
“Tell me,” Ruggiero said.
“Demons,” Ferrau said. “Taken to human form. With flashes of flame and light, they seduce men into worshiping them. They shift from flame to flesh and they consume anything around them.”
Ruggiero shook his head.
“Demons don’t shift forms.”
“Ay, so I would have said, too, before I went down to them.”
“You’ve seen them?” Ruggiero asked. Ferrau nodded.
“The very night I sent for you. The very night.” He licked his lips and looked over at Ruggiero. “They found the entrance to a… a temple. I have no word for it, other than that. An awesome construction, buried deep in the sand.”
“Your missing city?” Ruggiero asked.
“No,” Ferrau said. “No. This place has only ever served one purpose. The walls, the floor… In the desert, there is nothing but sand to build with. The ancients knew the way of forming stone from it, and they constructed their buildings of great slabs, but down deep, it always remembers that it is sand. It always returns. And sand has no memory but that it is sand.”
Ruggiero frowned as Ferrau held his hands out in front of himself. They trembled in the firelight. Ferrau closed them and tucked them back in against his sides.
“The sandstone in the temple, Ruggiero. It is stained with blood.”
“New blood?” Ruggiero asked and Ferrau laughed darkly.
“Perhaps, but not enough new blood to begin to cover the old.”
Ruggiero nodded.
“It is best you sent for me,” he said. Ferrau nodded.
“I am a soldier and a merchant. I have seen great violence and I know a great many secrets, but I know when I am matched, and I know that there is more to you than there is the simple soldier.”
Ruggiero nodded. He didn’t talk about it very much, the things his father had taught him. He’d met his wife Aurora in battle, sword to sword, and it was the very first time he’d known someone with power like his own. They’d fought for days before they’d fallen, exhausted, next to each other, crawling to a nearby stream where they scooped water for each other as they spoke. He’d loved her from that moment, driving a division between himself and his father that he had no remedy for. The power remained.
Not many people knew about it. His father had friends—the type of friends who drove out the need for enemies—with a shared knowledge and power, and Aurora had a small group of men who had learned at the knee of a single elder, but Ruggiero himself had no peer.
Margano knew that. Aurora knew, but not with the same real awareness that Margano knew.
Ruggiero was the second most powerful man the world had ever seen, if Margano’s system of measurement was trustworthy.
“I will look into it,” he said. “If you will take me there and then promise to leave me on my own.”
Ferrau laughed.
“I would not have it any other way.”
They set out the next morning long before the sun had reached the horizon. The sky was colored enough to allow them to ride, and if they waited for dawn, the cool of the day would be lost to them. As it was, Ruggiero worried for his friend returning under the worst of the heat.
They stopped once to let the horses drink. Ferrau had camels who were better-suited to the desert, but both men preferred their fighting horses, for all the cost that came with tending them, simply because staying alive had justified those costs time and time again.
Frontino was as critical to Ruggiero as Gentleness herself. The horse had been with him since he was a child, and he had a mind that rivaled most men for tactics and commands. The two men agreed that Ferrau would take Frontino back to the camp and return in two days. Ruggiero would not be able to leave the temple in that time, but there was no place for the horse inside, and he would die of exposure, outside.
The dunes went on forever in every direction. There were no landmarks, no distinguishing features that Ruggiero might have used to make his way back here. The only reason that Ferrau knew where he was going was that it hadn’t been long enough for the dunes to change shape since he’d last been here. Two weeks, three at the most, and the way would be lost.
“What are they doing out here?” Ruggiero wondered out loud. “Demons need people to amuse them.”
Ferrau looked back at him but didn’t answer. Ruggiero suspected that it was because there was no answer, with just what the two of them knew.
“Djinn,” he breathed.
They rounded the arm of a dune and there at the bottom of the trough between dunes, like a siphon for all of the sand of the great desert, Ruggiero saw a gaping black door. To either side, he could see columns, and even at this distance he could see that they were carved with figures, but that was all. He dismounted, taking his supplies for the two days and a few other things, then he shook hands with Ferrau and his friend left, toting a skeptical Frontino behind him. Ruggiero gave Frontino a wave, then started across the slick sand, his feet sliding down into it deep enough that it covered the toes of his boots at each stride. It was a sucking exhaustion, walking in sand such as this, and he hoped that Frontino was able to recover well during his rest. Ruggiero only had some hundred yards to cover; Frontino had traversed a sea of the stuff.
He reached the stone floor outside of the door and looked up at the columns. Three times his height, they bore figures of men and animals, many of which he knew, but many more that he didn’t. Strange limbs and faces, they seemed fantastic, but standing next to dogs and camels and horses, he had to wonder if they weren’t real. The men hunted them, fled from them, consumed and were consumed by them. Making nothing of importance from this, but noting as much of it as he could in case it did prove relevant, Ruggiero approached the door.
The sun cut a hard line into the dark, a wedge of searing light against blind darkness, and Ruggiero stood to cast his own shadow across it, listening for anything but the ever-present wind and the sound of shifting sand.
There was nothing.
He took a step forward, holding up his hand and blowing across his flat palm to spark a white flame into existence. Rather than scorching, like the sun outside, the white flame glowed with a cool purity that lit the space without blinding him.
A shadow moved and Ruggiero drew Gentleness from his hip, the angel blade resonating with the power of the angel flame in his palm.
Ruggiero took another step forward, wanting to be out of the unkind sunlight, but not wanting to advance further than he was sure he should go.
Patience.
Patience won as many battles as swords did.
Gentleness was perhaps less willing to wait for him to become aware of his surroundings; he didn’t need anything more than the indignant flow of magic off of the sword to know that there were demons about.
There was a roll of flame some distance in front of him and a man appeared. He had a solid build and smooth skin the color of the sand, and he wore an ornate outfit of the same color, loose in the style that Ferrau wore and decorated everywhere with bits of bronze. Smoky orange flame rolled away from his feet as he stood.
“Who are you and why do you disturb us?” he asked.
“I am Ruggiero, son of Margano,” Ruggiero answered. “How many are you?”
He could see, in the white light from his palm and from the orange flame around the djinn that Ferrau hadn’t exaggerated the extent of stain on the orange sandstone. There were streaks on top of streaks, staining two rows of columns that went the length of the great room, and the floor was almost black. Even so, the air smelled of nothing but stale and dry. It was old blood.
“We are many,” the djinn answered. “And you are few.”
“I am one,” Ruggiero said. “Why do you hide in the darkness?”
“We choose darkness or light as it suits us,” the djinn said. “You will bow before us.”
Ruggiero looked up at the ceiling, at the way the stone was worked and carved. It would have been beautiful, in the right light. The time that men had put into creating this place was extraordinary.
“I’ve never known a powerful demon to hide out this far away from men,” Ruggiero finally said. “I’m more inclined to believe that you are here out of fear, that you have come here to hide.”
The djinn tipped his head back at the ceiling and roared, a howl that sounded like the wind in a sandstorm, and he flexed his arms in, up over his head, then spread his hands.
“We will tear you into pieces and feast on your flesh,” he said, bringing his head back down. “But not before you worship me.”
He closed his hands and the temple vanished, as did he.
Ruggiero found himself standing on a grassy hillside overlooking a shallow pool. The rocks on the bottom were a cheery color of green, like the hill just continued down into the crystal water. A great tree spread branches over his head, and everything twinkled with a sense of new, of fresh, of clean.
Without indulging in it, he could smell the damp of the air, the smell of new life and healthy earth. He checked his grip on Gentleness, who was still on an angry alert at the darkness of the magic around him, then he extinguished the angel flame in his palm. What he saw was not with his eyes, and the angel flame was a dangerous thing to control when he was in possession of all of his wits.
Aurora drifted down out of the forest shade behind him wearing a gauzy blue gown, walking to the water’s edge in bare feet and looking back at him. She smiled, a simple, devastating smile, and held a hand out to him. He shook his head.
“I’m sorry, my love,” he told her. “I can’t.”
She tipped her head to the side.
“We work,” she said softly. “And we fight. And sometimes I feel we do very little else. Is there never a time for us?”
“There will be,” he answered. “When the work is done.”
“Do you never fear that perhaps I won’t be here, when the work is done?” she asked.
She had a lovely face. Not as wan and willowy as was fashionable in some of the places Ruggiero had lived, nor as ample and round as was popular in other places, but firm and featured, with a scar over her eye where someone had landed a fist during a fight, and another down the side of her face where the tip of a lance had flung off her helmet. It was her eyes, though, that he’d admired, laying on the ground next to her, exhausted like his body might never recover, Gentleness in his hand and Frontino walking a cautious circle, snorting at Aurora’s horse.
The ground had been heavily trod from their fight, that day, but it had been ground like this. Clean-smelling and earthy, full of green life.
He felt the longing in his body to take that still-offered hand, to pull his feet out of his boots and stand next to her ankle-deep in the water, and he shook his head.
“I cannot stay,” he said.
“We will miss each other entirely, if we aren’t careful,” she said to him, and he pulled his mouth into a tight line.
“Such is the cost of power, beloved.”
She dropped her eyes, then looked at him with intensity.
“I miss you.”
“And I miss you,” he answered, turning his head away. “This place will not keep me.”
He took a step and the brilliant color of the place twisted and spun, dissolving into flat, dank gray.
A dungeon.
It smelled of must and human waste, and Ruggiero found himself face to face with himself. He did not recognize his own body, but he knew his visage, and he knew that the other self recognized him.
The scrawny, ill-dressed man sat on the floor, his arms held in shackles over his head.
“What’s happened to you?” Ruggiero asked.
“The inevitable,” the other Ruggiero answered. “What did you think would happen?”
Ruggiero looked around the cell. Two walls were square, one with a door, but the rest was an arc, a subset of a round wall. This was no ordinary prison.
“Who?” he asked, looking back at himself. “Who put you here?”
The other man spat on the floor.
“You think you’re so free and so powerful that no one will ever force you to take a side. They conspired against you, you fool. Both sides wanted you gone, because neither could trust you.”
“What of Aurora?” Ruggiero asked.
“Dead,” the other man growled. “Died trying to defend you. Last thing she saw was her own failure.”
Ruggiero went to the door, looking out.
“Whose prison is this?”
“Who do you think?” the other man asked. “Don’t tell me you don’t know the place.”
He did.
He didn’t want to admit it, but he did know this building.
Only from the outside, but the size and shape of it was unmistakable.
“Margano would never allow it,” he said.
“He wears the key around his throat,” the other Ruggiero said. Ruggiero came and squatted in front of himself, looking into his own eyes.
“I will not fear,” he said. “My future is not known, and I will not be swayed away from my path by what may be.”
The other Ruggiero blinked at him.
“You will suffer as no other man has suffered,” he said. “You will lose everything at the hands of men you trusted.”
Ruggiero stood.
“And yet I will not despair,” he said, turning his face away and taking a step. The gray blurred and melted, and he found himself in a room constructed of wood and plaster. There was a tapestry on the wall, and he stood next to the solid post of a canopy bed. He turned his head and smiled once more as he saw Aurora curled there against a pile of pillows. He tipped his head, frowning, and took a step forward.
Yes.
Cradled there in her arms, swaddled tight, there was an infant.
Aurora sighed, seeming to be unable to see him, this time, and a man walked into the room. It was a friend, a man that both Aurora and Ruggiero had fought alongside in the war, as need arose, and Ruggiero recognized the home he was in, as he saw Montalban.
Aurora looked up at Montalban with a friendly smile, then looked down at her child again.
“Any word?” she asked.
“No,” Montalban said. “The king does not know where he is.”
Ruggiero frowned, and Aurora put her hand to her mouth, blinking quickly as she put on a pained smile.
“I know that he is where he should be,” she said. “I just wish…”
“Of course,” Montalban said. “He should have been here for the birth of his son.”
Aurora shook her head.
“He will come.”
“No one has heard from him in months,” Montalban said. “I think perhaps…”
“Do not speak to me of this,” Aurora said. “Not today.”
Montalban lowered his head in a slight bow and then stood straight, looking directly at Ruggiero.
“You are, of course, welcome to stay here for as long as you need,” his friend said. “I will send someone down into town to hire you a nurse.”
“I am fine with my own two arms,” Aurora said. “Thank you.”
“You need rest,” Montalban said, his attention still fixed on Ruggiero. “Especially with Ruggiero not here, you must take extra care that you keep yourself healthy and give yourself time to recover.”
“He is out there,” Aurora said. “And he will come.”
“God willing,” Montalban said, the corner of his mouth twitching up. He turned and knelt next to the bed. “But you will remain as my guest, either way, until you are fit to travel. I will not hear of anything else.”
“Of course,” Aurora said. “And we will be grateful of your hospitality.”
Ruggiero closed his eyes.
He felt it.
Unwonted and unbidden, he felt it.
Jealousy. Mistrust. Anger.
He took a long, slow breath.
“This is not real,” he said. “And even if it were to happen, I trust my wife and I trust my friend. Even if something were to kindle between them in my absence, I forgive them.”
The words were freeing, though not magic. He opened his eyes again and found that he was still in the room, but now the child was to the side in a bassinet and Montalban lay in bed next to Aurora, his arm supporting her shoulders.
“They confirmed it today,” Montalban said, watching Ruggiero. “He died in a fight.”
Aurora nodded.
“I’ve suspected it,” she said. “He would have come, if he had been able. At least…” She paused. “At least he died doing what he felt he was meant to do.”
Montalban nodded, kissing her hair as he watched Ruggiero out of the corner of his eye.
“Yes. You must keep that in your mind.”
Ruggiero steeled himself.
“That man is my friend,” he said, meeting Montalban’s eye. “I trust him, even if he would do something like this, because my trust is about me and not about him.”
He turned his face away and the vision vanished like cut ribbons. He was once more in a forest, dark, with trees so old and so tall that he couldn’t see any branches. It was just the great trunks of the aged trees and the dim forest floor. In front of him, in a slanted shaft of light, he saw himself, once more, fighting sword-on-sword with a man in black armor. The Ruggiero of his vision was helmetless, but otherwise fully armored, and his shoulder-length hair flew in the air behind him as he attacked. Light glinted off of his armor, and the other knight fell back, step by step.
There was no sound but that of steel against steel in the muted forest, and the fight seemed to go on for forever, Ruggiero handsome and powerful against the black knight, always winning, always pursuing. Finally, he slew the black knight and another man with a blue pendant stepped forward, shoving his standard into the soft earth and unsheathing a sword.
This fight lasted perhaps longer than the first, with more give-and-take, but without Ruggiero ever seeming to have to give ground. He was fast and powerful, and it was only a matter of time and waiting for the other man to make a mistake before he won again.
Yet another man stepped forward with a red flag on a standard and once more Ruggiero fought. He did not sweat and he did not fade.
He was matchless.
Even Ruggiero, standing off to the side, could see that that was what was going on. The man in the shaft of light was invincible, the most powerful man alive with a sword or with magic.
He beat the red knight and a fourth man stepped forward, a man in robes, who spread his arms and threw a fireball at the Ruggiero in the glinting armor. That Ruggiero crossed his arms and braced as the fireball crashed into him, then he roared and spoke words of magic - words that Ruggiero recognized and would have used, himself, if he’d been up on the sunlit knoll instead of the vision of himself. The mage fell back, spreading his arms again and throwing a glass bottle at Ruggiero. The exchange was complicated, and at the highest level of skill in magic, but the Ruggiero in the light never flinched, never failed. When the time came, he vanquished the mage.
Ruggiero took a step back, away from the vision of himself, and he shook his head.
“I am a man,” he said. “I am not invincible, and I will die when it is time for me to die. I will not count on my own strength to give me victory.”
Trees from overhead crumbled and fell onto him like fine ash, and when he opened his eyes again, he was standing in sand.
There was no shelter anywhere. No water, no other person.
He was alone.
The sun overhead was unbearable, and there was no landmark anywhere to give him a sense of direction.
He was lost.
He was hopeless.
He peered up at the sun through slitted fingers, then he squatted down, covering his head with his arms, and he pointed himself at his shadow.
“The sun travels east to west,” he said out loud. “In an hour I will know which way is north, and I will go that way. If I do not find settlement, I will continue on until I perish, and I accept it.”
The intensity of the sun went away, and Ruggiero blinked, standing and holding out Gentleness at the sudden darkness.
“I will not sacrifice my duty for my desires,” he said to the echoing space. “I will not succumb to despair or greed or jealousy. I will not feed you.”
“Very well,” a dark voice said. “If you will not come willingly, we will devour you as you stand.”
He opened his palm, blowing across it and letting the white angel flame grow higher, burning his very self, an oil sourced from deep within him, but one that he tended and kept at reserve for moments like this one.
The circle of demons drew back, throwing up their arms at the sudden, pure light, and Ruggiero held out Gentleness, the angel blade impatient to be involved.
Once more, Ruggiero looked around the space, bending time to let himself really look at it as he drew on long-practiced spells that bound the demons to their own space. They could not glitch from one place to another, while his magic was active, and he felt the way the temple reacted to his light magic.
This was a place of great, great darkness.
The deep-rooted dark magic flexed around him, unaccustomed to the intrusion of light, and he pushed harder, changing the shape of his cast to address the room as much as the djinn. They flamed around him, one by one kicking on the roll of orange flame about their feet until their legs disappeared into the fires.
The walls were bloody shoulder high and above, and the floor under Ruggiero’s feet had lost its sanded texture.
“Where do you find the men to bring here?” Ruggiero asked.
“They are drawn,” one of the djinn said. “They hear the promises of what we can give them and they come to us.”
“The desire,” another djinn breathed. “They season themselves.”
“How many die, trying to find you?” Ruggiero asked. “And how would they know to search?”
There was a dark chuckle behind him, and Ruggiero turned, just a simple foot-over-foot motion, to face a djinn who had slid ahead of the rest.
“Because, once in a while, we let one go,” he said. “All it takes is a wish, and men will feed themselves to us for the rest of time.”
The demon raised his arms over his head, spinning a ball of flame there, orange and black, murky with smoke, and Ruggiero counted the djinn he’d seen.
There were at least a dozen of them.
Conjurers of fantasy, demons who fed on lust and anger and greed, and ultimately on blood.
“No,” Ruggiero said, looking at the walls, at the signs of lives wasted. “No. You will not have one more.”
There was a laugh, but he spun, casting strong, light fields of protection, ones that spread until they hit the walls and kept going. The temple trembled and the djinn moved to throw the great fireball at him, but Ruggiero breathed in at a break in his spell and blew across the angelflame in his palm, the white flame lengthening and stretching to take in the demon’s fire and suffocating it.
Silently.
Angel flame was breathlessly silent, and as Ruggiero put his hand out, letting the white crystalline flame seek out the rest of the demon fire, the room grew quieter and quieter.
The walls shook and sandy dust drifted down from the ceiling as Ruggiero continued to cast. The demons hesitated, Gentleness keeping them out at arms’ length.
Only when he was ready, as he felt the dark magic rumbling through the temple beginning to crack and shatter, did Ruggiero let the angelflame touch the floor.
It took to the human blood there like its native fuel, burning ruby red. The demons screamed and tried to flee, but they could not glitch, and the flame burnt, spreading through the temple out of Ruggiero’s control, racing across the bloodied surfaces. It still had a hook into him; it was the only way he could hope to extinguish it when it had run its course, but it left him on his own at the center of a red inferno, weakening as the powerful angelflame sucked at him. He felt the last of the djinn ash, returning to the fiery plane they came from, and he felt the walls of the temple turn back the angelflame, finally. He had underestimated how large the place might be, and he had no idea where the door was. What he did know was that he didn’t expect to find a second door.
He sheathed Gentleness and held his arms out to either side, allowing angelflame to sprout from the other hand and join the rest of the fire, pushing it out of his way as he walked.
The walls of the temple creaked and groaned, and somewhere they partially collapsed, pouring an ocean of sand in on the fire, but it yet burned. It didn’t need air like earth-bound flames. It would burn until its fuel was consumed - until the human blood in the temple was purged. Ruggiero let it go, taking another step and another step, only the vaguest sense of the shape of the building around him guiding a guess at where to go.
He was tiring.
If he fell, the flame would burn until his body was gone, and then it would go out, but it would burn everything else, first.
The temple would go.
He thought of Aurora, hoped that, if he didn’t make it, she would find happiness with a man who cherished her as Ruggiero did.
Thought of Ferrau, and hoped that his friend would feel no guilt at sending Ruggiero into the temple on his own. Ferrau would have been no aid, and Ruggiero was glad he didn’t have to worry about rescuing other victims as he trudged, struggling not to fall to his knees.
He couldn’t see anything. The crimson, fluid-surfaced flames were higher than his head, and they climbed the walls around him.
He walked on.
Another wing of the temple collapsed, and bits of sandy gravel rained down on Ruggiero’s head.
He thought of soft, green forest and of water that covered mossy stones.
The roof behind him gave and he looked over his shoulder to see sand spilling down in a waterfall around the sandstone.
He was almost empty.
And he could not see.
He would die here, but he had done what he needed to do.
Sand splashed against the walls, and the angelflame extinguished in a great collapse as the blood ran out through most of the temple.
It was only here, in the room with him, keeping him company and finishing the job he’d been here to do.
There was little dark magic left; it collapsed with the stone.
More sand clouded his vision as he walked through a sheet of it coming down between stones, and he blinked, shaking sand out of his hair.
There.
That was a cut in the stone that looked like a doorway.
And there was no angelflame beyond it.
He kept going, his legs no longer supporting his body. Something else was, some primordial desire for survival, some magic he didn’t know, perhaps something else. Another pocket of flame went out.
Ruggiero was through the doorway.
The entire room collapsed behind him and the deluge of sand knocked him forward, buried him.
He crawled, pushing himself through the sun-scorched sand.
He was close.
Only the top layer of sand could be this hot.
A hand grabbed his, pulling him loose, and the last of the flames went out.
Ferrau dusted Ruggiero off with firm hands, then held his shoulders.
“I am to take it that they are gone now, yes?” he asked.
Ruggiero flinched against the intense sunlight.
“Why are you here?”
“It is the agreed time,” Ferrau said. “Two days.”
Ruggiero shook his head, sand falling down the back of his neck. Ferrau grinned.
“It was an epic battle then,” he said. “You must tell me everything. Come. Come.”
Ruggiero looked up at the top of the sand dune, relieved beyond measure to see Frontino standing with Ferrau’s horse.
“You must tell me everything,” Ferrau said again with a happy grin. “Your stories are always the best.”
About the Author
Chloe Garner acts as the conduit between her dreaming self and the paper (or keyboard, since we live in the future). She writes paranormal, sci-fi, fantasy, and whatever else goes bump in the night. When she's not writing she steeplechases miniature horses and participates in ice cream eating contests. Not really, but she does tend to make things up for a living. Find her on Twitter as BlenderFiction, on Goodreads and Facebook, or at blenderfiction.wordpress.com.