43: THE FIRE CAVES

Jorat Dominion, Quuros Empire. Three days since Kihrin D’Mon discovered that it’s possible to make talismans for other people … against their will

“Darzin was always so charming, wasn’t he?” Kihrin said, shaking his head.

“Thorra,” Janel said.

“Yes,” he agreed. “Definitely thorra.” He chuckled.

“He sounds like a real winner.” Ninavis yawned as she examined her cup. “I think I’ll boil up another pot of coffee.” She left for the kitchen.

Janel watched her leave, frowning. Kihrin couldn’t tell if she was upset with Ninavis or upset in general.

“Are you all right?” he asked, anyway, squeezing her hand.

“Thurvishar isn’t the wizard we’re waiting on,” Janel said suddenly. “Relos Var is.”

The whole table fell quiet for a stunned second.

Kihrin pulled back his hand.

“Janel!” Brother Qown stood. “We were explaining the context—”

Dorna added, “Now maybe I wouldn’t have—”

“Silence!” Janel snapped. She turned to Kihrin. “We don’t have Khoreval anymore. I possessed it briefly, but Relos Var reclaimed it. So we made a deal: if I convince you to help us kill Morios, he’ll hand over Khoreval. We need both weapons to finish the job.” She added quietly, “That’s what I needed to tell you.”

Kihrin didn’t know what to think, but the expression on Janel’s face left little doubt that she was serious. She had, in fact, been planning to betray him.

Or at least it would have felt like betrayal.

He stood from his chair, not sure what he’d do, only that he had to do something.

“Kihrin, please—”

He whirled back to her and pointed to the ceiling. “If you and Var are working together, why is my angry daughter from another lifetime hovering around outside? Or is that just to keep me from leaving?”

“Var must have realized I would tell Janel about Father Zajhera,” Brother Qown mused. “With the gaeshe broken, nothing prevented me from telling the truth.”

“Which would lead to me confessing the truth as well. But Relos Var doesn’t know Thurvishar is working with us,” Janel explained. “We left him in Atrine as insurance.¹ And the moment Thurvishar sees any sign of Morios, he’ll open a portal back to us.”

“So … I could have left here at any time, with Thurvishar’s help?”

“Wait, we could’ve left at any time?” Dorna seemed just as surprised.

Kihrin ignored the old woman and continued glaring at Janel. “Tell me you didn’t know Relos Var was going to send over Aeyan’arric to keep us trapped.”

“I swear I didn’t,” Janel said. “I didn’t even realize Aeyan’arric had returned to life. Relos Var had claimed she would, but I had no idea how little time it would take.”

Kihrin ground his teeth, wrestling with his anger. “And I’m supposed to trust you? You’ve handed Relos Var my location. He’s not my friend, Janel. He doesn’t have a single good intention regarding me.”

Janel looked about to protest, but then inhaled instead. “It wouldn’t matter if he did. He’s a farmer raising livestock. A farmer may like a pig—name it, pet it, feed it treats—but it will still see the ax come autumn. Even if he loved you, even if he loved me, it wouldn’t stop him from killing us if he felt it was needed.”

“Sure, and what pig cares that he was loved, when it’s time for the slaughter.”

“But,” Qown said, “I’ve come to know him well enough to say with certainty that he doesn’t kill unnecessarily. The prophecies strongly imply Morios will be defeated—there’s no reason to think Relos Var wouldn’t want to help us accomplish that goal.”

“That makes me feel so much better,” Kihrin snapped. “Oh wait, no, it doesn’t.”

“Qown, send a message to Thurvishar. Tell him to open a gate here so Kihrin may leave.” Janel rubbed her temples and made a study of the bar counter.

“But—” Qown’s eyes widened. “The … dragon. There’s a quarter million people in Atrine right now…”

“Tricking Kihrin to help us under false pretenses was always a mistake. I don’t know why I ever thought otherwise.”

“Because of a quarter million people, foal,” Dorna said.

Star raised an eyebrow. “You’re running?”

“Oh, don’t you start,” Kihrin said. He sat back down and waved at Qown when the priest pulled Worldhearth from his agolé. “Put that away. I’m staying.”

Janel blinked. “You are?”

“I have four reasons,” he said as he drank the last of his cold coffee. “First, I came here to find you, and while I’m not happy about the way this is going, I’m not leaving without you. Second, because the hell if I’m running from Relos Var, when I’m the one carrying Godslayer. He should be running from me. Third, because I’ll feel like a real ass if Morios is real, and I just left all those people to die.”

“And fourth?” Janel asked.

He grimaced. “You can’t just end the story there. I need to know what happens next.”

Janel didn’t laugh, but she did take her turn.

Janel’s Turn. Outside the Ice Demesne, Yor, Quur.

“This is my place!” Aeyan’arric screamed as she flew toward me. “You aren’t welcome here, trespasser!”

She loomed even larger than she had in my memories. White and bright with eyes so very blue, a color echoed by her serpentine belly’s aquas and greens, flickering pastel hues like overlapping ice blocks. Aeyan’arric blinded in her brilliance, and yet cast a dark shadow all around her. The waning storm revealed the castle above, glimmering. When Cherthog had built his palace, he had lopped off a mountaintop, building a giant crystal and marble pyramid to sparkle in the sunlight.

Somewhere up there, Veixizhau had tossed me out a balcony, to slide down the side like so much unwanted garbage, to die in the frozen cold.

And somehow, I had survived the fall and the cold, although I suspected I now knew exactly how.

But a tolerance for cold didn’t mean I would survive being ripped apart by claws half my size.

“I’m sorry!” I shouted, because I didn’t know what else to say. “Is there a path back up to the castle? I’ll leave right now.”

She looked at me with those mad azure eyes, her lips pulling back as she opened her mouth. In mere moments, she’d do something I would deeply regret.

I dove to the side, scrambling to find cover. Even as I did, cold air and snow blasted from her direction. I shuddered as I barely escaped being encased in ice. I felt cold. For the first time since waking, I actually felt cold, a trembling I felt down to my bones.

The ice before me shuddered and cracked as her claws slammed into it, ripping huge grooves into the glacier.

Fire, I thought. I needed fire.

Unfortunately, I had nothing to burn except a soaking-wet dress. Veixizhau had taken all my jewelry, from my belt to my jeweled hairpins. We stood on a mountain of frozen water, useless as fuel.

So I’d have one chance, and even then, I could only hope to distract her.

I pulled the dress off my body and tossed it up into the air. It froze solid the moment it left contact with my skin, but that mattered not at all; I made it burn.

The dragon jerked back in surprise, startled.

And during her shocked blink, I ran.

Really, I tripped and slid as the glacier rolled down beneath me in a rather sharp slope. I’m sure I made a ridiculous sight, naked and without weapons. I couldn’t have been more vulnerable.

Which is why running seemed like such a fine idea.

Arasgon would have been proud. Dorna too.

Toward the base of the mountain, the glacier ramped down toward a crevasse. I hoped it would be too narrow for the dragon to follow, although I was still in trouble if she decided to breathe another blizzard in my direction.

But what did I have to lose?

As I listened to Aeyan’arric’s screams, I realized Xaltorath might have had good reason to be upset. I could easily die here while accomplishing nothing. That I’d somehow survived for this long was a miracle.

I ran into the crevasse as Aeyan’arric’s shadow covered me. She was just seconds behind. I tripped and cried out as a sharp ice shard ripped open my shin, proving I possessed no great immunity to normal damage.

Aeyan’arric attempted to claw at me through the opening, but the crevasse indeed proved too narrow. Her efforts gouged huge ice chunks from the opening, until sparks flew as she hit granite. I shuffled backward, leaving a blood trail behind me on the ice to mix with the meltwater left by my passing.

Then the attack stopped. I heard wings beat as she flew away.

I waited.

I didn’t go back to the opening to make sure she’d left. I’m not a fool. But I sat there in the cave for several minutes, listening, naked and shivering from cold that would have slain most people.

Then I heard footsteps. Footsteps from behind me as a warm light cast shadows on the cave wall before me.

I pulled myself up into a crouch.

A woman entered the cave, holding a lantern in one hand and a long, curving sword in the other. Her dark skin had a blue-gray cast, and her black hair was matted into thick, felted wool plaits. She dressed in chain, under a coat of interlocking metal plates. She looked Khorveshan, but more notably, she appeared frozen, with ice rimming her face and snowflakes sparkling on her dark lashes.

She also looked very dead, but that status didn’t seem to be proving an inconvenience.

“Well, then,” the woman said. “What has little Aeyan brought me today? This isn’t a safe place for you, young lady.” She smiled. “Although you living this long is an accomplishment. Especially dressed like that.”²

“Who—” My teeth chattered to speak. “Wh-who are you?”

The dead woman motioned me to follow her. “I’m Xivan Kaen. Now why don’t we find you something to wear.”

---

“I thought—” I cleared my throat as I followed the woman deeper into the crevasse, which had in fact turned into a fine cave mouth, no longer ice, but solid rock. “My apologies. I thought—”

“Let me guess. Someone told you Duchess Xivan Kaen had died.” Xivan shrugged. “They didn’t lie to you, now did they? And who are you?” She pulled a scarf from her belt. “For your leg.”

“Janel Theranon,” I said, rubbing my arms. “And thank you.” I bent down to clean the shallow wound and then tied the scarf around my leg. I needed to dress it properly, but this didn’t seem the time.

“And what are you doing here? I’ll admit I don’t mind having visitors, it’s just never happened from this side of the caverns before. You’re lucky sound echoes through the tunnels.”

“I’m afraid one of the duke’s wi—um.” I coughed.

“One of the duke’s wives. I’m aware he’s married others.” She didn’t look amused about the idea.

“Right. I honestly have no idea why she did this. Because she found out—” I paused, unsure if I might reveal too much.

Xivan raised an eyebrow. “You really must learn to finish sentences. She found out what?”

I stared at her. She was Khorveshan. A dead Khorveshan murdered by Yorans, in fact. I therefore didn’t think she’d feel the same way as Yorans about my “unmarried” status. “She found out that I’m not really married. And then she drugged and dumped me outside to freeze to death. I don’t really understand why.”

“Interesting,” Xivan said, “and who are you not really married to?”

I cleared my throat. “Relos Var.”

She chuckled. “Ah yes. Relos Var. I know him of old. In fact, I owe him for this.” Xivan gestured down at herself.

“I thought the Yorans—”

“Oh no. Var didn’t kill me. He brought me back to life, or close enough. And bought himself a duke in the bargain.” She frowned. “I know why you were left outside.” She stopped walking. “It seems one of my husband’s wives is a devotee of the witch-queen Suless.”

“I don’t understand.”

She leaned in close. “Are you doing that on purpose? You’re very … warm.”

I made a helpless gesture. “I’m not doing anything.”

“Also interesting.” Xivan looked at the lantern light sparkling against the cave wall. “In the old days, before we Quuros arrived, the witch-queen Suless had an understanding with her worshippers. She’d grant any wish her female devotees asked, but only if they sacrificed an unmarried girl to her. Usually a woman would sacrifice a daughter, but technically speaking, the sacrifice didn’t have to be a relative.”

“I don’t feel sacrificed,” I said.

But I also remembered hearing the whooping laughs of the hyenas closing in and wondered. What would have happened if Aeyan’arric hadn’t arrived?

“Aren’t you glad Suless is dead?” Her gaze was thoughtful. “But it’s hard to stamp out a religion. People still practice the old ways, hold hyenas and bears as sacred because Suless and Cherthog claimed those animals as their symbols. Men still marry off their daughters as soon as they can too. They probably don’t even remember that once the practice derived from a desire to keep girls from being offered to the witch-queen—and being sacrificed and used against them.”

“That’s barbaric. Let me guess—the sacrifices were left out in the cold.”

“Yes, to be claimed by the snow hyenas or worse. Suless ate babies. Ask anyone. I have my doubts that’s really true. The old stories never said where the witch-mothers came from. You see, Suless used to have these priestesses—witches, naturally—whom she crafted from snow and would send to marry chieftains who pleased her.”

I scoffed. “Crafted from snow?”

“Now I think she was taking all those sacrificed girls and raising them herself, before sending them back among the clans as her own personal enforcers and secret police. After all, if Suless really had been able to create witches out of frozen water, Yor wouldn’t have lost the war.”

“What happened to the witch-mothers then?” I thought of Bikeinoh’s claim that Wyrga was the last.

“Quur killed them all, of course.” She waved a hand. “Decades ago, long before you were born.”

“Yet if the witch-mothers have been gone for decades, someone had to show Veixizhau how to sacrifice me to Suless.”

“Is that who did it?” She smiled. “Now I could be wrong. Maybe you were just dumped outside to freeze to death because Veixizhau was jealous, but you said she found your maiden status interesting. Her reasons for that interest wouldn’t be the same as a man’s, so I’m jumping to conclusions. Hug the wall to the left. Whatever you do, avoid wandering too close to the cave mouth on the right.”

“Why, what’s in there?” The rays of the lantern cast long shadows into the opening.

“Death.” She pointed to a place where the cave opened into a medium-sized room. Blue smoke hovered on the ground to the opening’s right.

I straightened. “I’ve seen that smoke before.”

“Then you know how dangerous it is.” She pointed down the left passage. “This way is safe.”

I stepped to the left. I didn’t need any explanation to know to avoid the right-hand passage. I’d recognized the witch-smoke we’d encountered in Mereina.

As she walked, the cave path smoothed out and became something more finished and navigable.

“Stay left. We’re passing another dangerous cavern.”

We walked on a slim ledge with a precipitous drop to our right, revealing a yawning darkness. Normally, I wouldn’t have been able to see far into those depths, but something was creating light down there. I saw the blue smoke lurking on the ground, twining through abandoned ruins.

Then the light source itself held my attention.

It was a spear.

A golden spear rested on a stand in the cave’s center.

“What is that?” I realized I had stopped to look.

I pretended at ignorance, but I recognized the spear Thaena had shown me. And once I’d found a way to steal Khoreval, I’d be finished with the easiest part of my mission.

I had no false illusions about how difficult it would be to slay a dragon.³

“A slower death than the last cave,” Xivan said, either ignoring my question or misunderstanding it. “I’m the only one who can walk there without dropping dead, since I already have. If the smoke doesn’t kill you, the stone will.”

I looked back at her. “The stone? What do you mean?”

“It’s a curse the Academy came up with when it proved too hard to dig the Yorans from their caves. They changed the caves themselves, turned them toxic. Rather like setting a castle on fire to force everyone out in a siege, except the castle is still burning a century later.”

My throat felt dry. “How many people lived here?”

“Thousands,” she answered. “And this is just one cave system. Hundreds were rendered unlivable in pockets all over Yor.”

I stared for another minute, feeling dread. As in Mereina, the blue smoke obscured a floor littered with the dead.

She put a cold hand on my shoulder. “We shouldn’t linger. Not here.”

I let her lead me farther on. The passage looked old, sturdy, and almost comfortable to me, given the Joratese love of cellar homes. We walked rather deep into the mountain, at least another half hour beyond the poison caves where the Yorans had once lived. By the time the tunnel opened into a cavern again, the temperature had turned warm.

The large cavern floor had been polished smooth and divided into sections. Living areas, I realized, although I didn’t know how useful or necessary they were for Xivan. Did she need to sleep? Did she need to eat?

If she did need to eat, what did she eat?

Also, the cavern was occupied. In one section, someone had drawn rings on the ground and set up wooden mannequins. A beautiful young woman was whacking a wooden practice sword against these pretend enemies, stopping to adjust her footing. She dressed in practical trousers and a loose-fitting shirt, and like Xivan, she looked Khorveshan.

But unlike Xivan, she looked alive.

“Here we are,” Xivan said. “Home sweet home, such as it is.”

As Xivan’s voice echoed, the woman who had been practicing stopped and looked back toward us. Her liquid brown eyes widened as she spotted me, and I flushed. For the first time since entering the caves, I felt embarrassed at my nudity.

“Talea,” Xivan said, “we have a guest. Let’s find her something to wear before we stir up trouble upstairs. This should be fun.”