BURN.
King Gwann’s kindly eyes widened.
The single word had not been uttered by the high priests chanting sonorously in classical Ashcrit. It had come from the altar itself.
The stonefire had spoken.
He stared at the fragment of rock that lay in the center of the large white pentangle. The altar was five times the normal dimensions—twenty-five yards on each of its five sides, instead of the normal five yards. The tiny pebble of stonefire was a mere black dot in the center of the ash-carpeted ground. The silverwood barrier that formed the five lines of the pentangle provided further protection to the priests, ministers, nobles, and servants who sat on the periphery of the sacred space.
The priests had insisted on this precaution, and Gwann had agreed gladly. His desire for a successful ceremony was outweighed by his inborn terror of stonefire. To a Krushan, it was a great source of power, the searing fire a response to the call of their ancient blood. But to any non-Krushan, it was evil incarnate.
It had cost several scores of lives just to obtain the precious, cursed thing itself. Stonefire was not officially banned, because the Krushan knew that there was no need to ban it. The wretched substance could take care of itself, and then some. Scores of Gwann’s bravest and boldest had sacrificed their lives to acquire and smuggle it across the Burnt Empire and into Gwannland. A few had been betrayed, others were killed fighting bandits as well as smugglers who had caught wind of the enterprise, but the vast majority of those brave warriors had been killed by stonefire itself. Despite all precautions—special yards-long silverwood tongs to handle it, a silverwood casket to contain it, and even two silverwood shields, all devised at great cost—the wicked thing had found opportunities to lash out at its abductors and burn them to ash during the long, perilous journey.
Among them was Jonasi, Gwann’s late wife’s brother and his most trusted champion. With him and most of his elite king’s guards lost in the desperate quest, Gwann was left with nothing more than a few platoons of untested recruits and broken veterans. His capacity for war, or even defense, was gone. Gwannland’s coffers, bare. Gwannland’s natural resources, taken. The war against Guru Dronas had cost him everything, and the price he had paid for mere survival had been the better half of his entire kingdom. Gwannland was now Gwannland only in name.
All he had left now was this final, desperate gambit.
The Ritual of Summoning.
And what did Gwann hope to achieve by this arcane ritual?
Vensera had asked him the question when he first spoke of it several months ago, after the war with Dronas ended.
A means of survival, he had answered.
She had looked at him for a long moment, her grey-green eyes searching his face the way one might look at a man to ascertain his sanity.
“This is Krushan sorcery,” she had said, and there was an edge of fear in her tone. She had not sounded so fearful even when they had stood on the field of Beha’al, looked out at the vast host arrayed against their own forces, and realized that they stood no chance of victory against Dronas. “These rituals are meant to summon the stone gods. And the stone gods recognize only the Krushan. We mortals were never meant to meddle in such matters.”
Gwann had drawn in a deep breath and released it slowly. “Neither were mortals meant to live alongside Krushan. Yet here we are. All together on a single continent. Thus has it been ever since they arrived here from wherever they came from. That is the way of our world, Vensera; it is what we are given. We can only survive by whatever means are available to us. If using Krushan sorcery is the only way to repair our fortunes, then so be it. We have no other choice.”
She had looked into his eyes and seen his despair, his ache at the forfeiture of territory his ancestors had fought so bitterly to win and hold for generations. “We will endure this loss,” she had said then. “It is what we do. And one day, when we have rebuilt our strength . . .”
She had not needed to continue. She was the greater warrior of them both, the superior strategist and tactician. His skills were those of administrator, jurist, and city planner. He had always taken her word when it came to martial affairs, just as she took his when it came to domestic ones. But he need not be a military genius to know that they stood no chance of ever rebuilding; he knew economics, and the fact was, Gwannland had nothing left to rebuild with. Everything their kingdom had possessed—people, farms, mines, trade stations, everything and anything that could fetch income, now or in the future—was now controlled by Dronas. He had carved out the heart of Gwannland and left them with the bare, broken bones.
Gwann had put a hand on her cheek, gently. She was still handsome, the scars adding to her rugged appeal. What most mistook for hardness, he knew to be a carapace; she was as soft on the inside as she was hard on the exterior.
“You know that will never happen,” he had said softly. “This is the only way.”
“It is one way,” she had admitted. “There are others.”
“It is the only sure way,” he had said. “If this succeeds, we will stand a chance of retaking Gwannland and ousting Dronas.”
She had fallen silent then. She could have countered with the argument that ousting Dronas, even if such a thing was possible now, would come with a heavy price: the wrath of the Burnt Empire. And if they had not been able to defeat Dronas at their strongest, to attempt to resist the empire at their weakest would mean total destruction. Not even the fealty oaths of his ancestors would protect them. But she said none of these things.
Instead she had said the one thing Gwann had never expected.
“Gwannland was my dowry,” she said at last. “Given to me as the price for taking you in matrimony.”
He had stared at her, not sure how to respond.
Yes, the realm was endowed to her, and she was its supreme commander.
That was the tradition: stree, being the stronger gender and built for war, received a dowry from the manush’s family at the time of nuptials. In this part of the world, the tradition called for the manush to gift a dowry to the stree, and Gwannland had been Gwann’s to Vensera. His only claim was a heritage, to the history of his ancestors whose bones were embedded in the foundations of every town and city across its breadth. She owned it, and it was hers to do with as she pleased. If she wished, she could command him not just as his sovereign but also as the commander of the domain.
But that was not at all what she meant.
“Yes, it is yours to dispose of as you will,” he had said.
“And I would willingly lose all of this and more,” she went on, “but losing you is a loss I cannot bear. That is all that concerns me now. Your well-being.”
She’s afraid the ritual might backfire and cost me my life, he realized with a start. Fool that he was, he had only thought of the political capital to be gained from the ceremony, without a care for his personal safety. She had reason to fear, after all; her own brother had been incinerated when he was occupied with fighting off bandits, one of whom had sprung open the silverwood casket like an idiot. The chip of stonefire had lashed out instantly, the tongue of white-hot flame turning Jonasi—and several other men within its reach—to ash and cinder in a flash. It was only natural that she should fear losing him as well.
Tears had sprung from his eyes. He had embraced her and touched her feet, the traditional sign of submission and respect to one’s betters, or in this case, a husband to a wife. “I do this to save Gwannland, and us,” he replied fiercely, “all of us. It is the only way. If I must die trying, so be it. I would rather be seared by stonefire than live in helpless thrall to Dronas.”
She had caught him by the shoulders, her powerful arms far stronger than his own, and raised him up, pressing her lips to his roughly. When she released him, her eyes were hot with love and fear.
“Do what you must, then. I will stand with you.”
Vensera sat beside him now. The silverwood barrier that formed the pentangle was sufficient only to protect them when seated. And deceptive though it was, sitting passively in that large ash-grey space, that vile thing would lash out faster than a viper’s fangs if so much as an inch of mortal flesh showed over the top. She was seated beside him, their hands clasped together tightly, dressed in their finest regal attire, waiting to be called upon to do their part.
It had taken a great deal of convincing to get the priests to conduct the ceremony at all. In the end, it was their own reduced circumstances that had brought them around. When the liege was defeated, so were all those dependent on her munificence. The priests had experienced loss of luxury and the looming specter of abject poverty, even starvation, if something was not done, and quickly. The ban on any citizen, high or low, crossing Gwannland’s newly redrawn borders, ruled out any chance of fleeing or seeking succor elsewhere.
Dronas has done everything possible to destroy us without actually sentencing us to death, Gwann thought heatedly. That way, he can have his revenge and stay within the letter of Krushan law.
Krushan law, as arcane and antiquated as their ceremonial rituals, forbade the killing of any bloodline oathsworn to Hastinaga. The forebear of the Kuin had taken the sacred oath before the first of the dynasty, the mythic Kr’ush himself, in the misty prehistory of the world. Dronas’s campaign of vengeance prevented him from harming any Kuin directly. He had done the next best thing: invited them to pitched battle, wiped out their army, taken everything of value to them, and left them with nothing but this desolate patch of fallow territory with no water source, no farmlands, towns, cities, or means of trade. He may as well have taken them to the middle of the Red Desert and abandoned them without food, water, or transport. That would have been a speedier death.
Vensera felt Gwann’s grip tighten and sensed his anger. She squeezed back, her much stronger grip curbed to avoid hurting him. He let the anger dissipate slowly, determined to keep his head clear through this ritual. It was dangerous enough without being distracted by his own emotions.
This must work.
He had to believe that now, and so did Vensera.
The priests had warned them beforehand: they must come to the altar with genuine need, holding back nothing. And if granted their given wish, they must accept it without question.
That was the way of the stone gods. You took what you were given, and you thanked stonefire.
Or stonefire would eat you alive.
The high priest was approaching a peak in the chanting. His face was limned with perspiration. Despite its deceptive appearance, the tiny pebble was exuding heat more intense than any bonfire. Yet it remained stolidly black and inert, just a little bit of black rock. The heat was penetrating enough that Gwann felt the palm that gripped Vensera’s grow slippery with sweat, even though they were seated some yards behind the high priest herself.
How far did the damned thing’s reach extend? Gwann had heard varying reports from the surviving soldiers who had returned from the expedition: some said it could extend any distance it pleased, which was impossible; others, that it could burn flesh from no more than ten yards away. But apparently the heat could be felt much, much farther than reported. Gwann estimated that he was well over sixty yards away, and still beads of sweat were breaking out on his forehead.
What was stonefire, anyway?
No one had a definite answer. It was forbidden to speak about it, let alone question, study, or record its properties. What little was known about its qualities was the stuff of myth and legend.
This much was certain, though: stonefire burned.
Not merely the burning of an ordinary fire. It consumed its prey whole, like a demonic thing armed with teeth, fangs, and a maw of living flame. The story went—whispered in private—that it consumed your very soul, from the inside out. And once it devoured you, you were trapped inside the stone itself, your essence digested and contained within its oily, alien surface. It was also said that though it looked like a stone, it was in fact a viscous thing, a dark substance that was not truly black, but appeared so because it erased light itself. That was the reason you could look at it but not truly see it. You only saw what it wanted you to see. Stonefire was no mere rock. It lived, it ate, it grew. And most of all, if you were Krushan, it empowered you. That was the reason why those who sat upon the Burning Throne, the highest seat of power in all Arthaloka, ruled the world.
It was that empowerment that Gwann now sought, in his time of desperation.
It was that which this ritual was supposed to summon.
The high priest’s sonorous voice droned on, reciting the Ashcrit mantras by rote, as priests before him had done for thousands of years. These particular mantras were rarely if ever used. The high priest had told Gwann that to the best of his knowledge—which was considerable—they had not been used by a non-Krushan in at least three sausaal, a sausaal being a unit of 108 Arthaloka years. And on that last occasion, the ritual had ended in disaster.
Gwann had heard the priest’s tone of disapproval and ignored the implicit warning. He would not be dissuaded from his chosen path. It was desperate, yes, but it was the only way. The magic mantra which would, if all went well, provide him with the power to overthrow Dronas and take back the kingdom that was rightfully his. He would have Gwannland back once more, and this time, he would have the power to hold and defend it.
A sudden silence alerted him.
The chanting had ended.
The high priest and all the purohits had completed the recitation of the mantras.
Gwann blinked, staring at them. They appeared to be frozen, staring blankly at the center of the pentangle.
The baking heat from the stonefire had increased in intensity and was increasing still.
He felt the sweat pouring down his face and back. Vensera’s palm was slick with sweat against his own. He glanced at her and saw her sweating as profusely. The white kushtas of the priests, though loose and flowing, had dark sweat patches as well, and he could see beads of perspiration gleaming on the upper lip of High Priest Namanraj. The man looked terrified, his eyes fixed on the stonefire. Everyone was staring at it, except Gwann himself. He glanced around and saw that even the sentries several yards behind him were shifting uneasily, their knuckles white around their pikes. The air was thick with a dry, searing heat. He had never been to Reygistan, but he imagined this must be what it felt like in the Red Desert.
Burn.
His head snapped back to the altar, eyes finding the stonefire.
This time that sinister, tongueless voice was louder, filling the space. He saw from the reactions on the faces around the altar that the others had heard it too. He had no recollection of this from the myths. Could stonefire . . . speak?
BURN.
The word felt like an ember igniting inside his brain.
He clutched his head as the heat seared him from the inside and was aware of the others holding their heads and exclaiming as well. The heat from the altar increased. Now sweat poured freely down his body, drenching his silk robes. He tugged off his turban, feeling as if his hair and skull must surely be on fire.
His hands felt only the normal warmth of skin and bone, but his head felt as if it would combust at any moment. An apprentice rose screaming, hands clutching his shaven pate, babbling that he could not take it anymore. Gwann saw High Priest Namanraj swear at the novice, gesturing wildly with one hand, something he had never before witnessed at a ceremony.
But it was already too late.
A spear of red hot flame, as slender as a scarlet thread, flashed out from the stonefire. The tip connected with the skull of the babbling acolyte, and Gwann watched, aghast, as the life left the man’s eyes and his limp body dropped bonelessly to the ground. He fell onto the silverwood barrier, sprawled partially over it, head and limbs extending into the ash-covered pentangle. One hand struck the ash-covered surface, and a grey puff rose in the air. A thin thread of blood dripped from the tiny perforation in the man’s head, falling onto the ash.
And in the instant it took that drop of blood to fall the remaining few inches to the ground, the stonefire claimed the body.
The head and upper torso of the acolyte evaporated in a liquid explosion. A small dark cloud hung for a moment, then even those fine particles of bloody ash were incinerated to near-invisible motes. The rest of the unfortunate victim’s body burned steadily, fiercely, like a corpse committed to the funeral pyre.
A howl of lament rose from the scores of gathered priests, clutching their heads and shaking from side to side as they mourned the loss of one of their own while calling upon their gods to protect them.
Vensera’s voice forced Gwann to look away from the ghastly sight of the destroyed apprentice.
She was staring with a stunned look on her face.
In her pupils, Gwann saw the red heat from the altar reflected. The light glowed upon her face. He saw that the entire gathering was illuminated by the stonefire’s glow.
And still the heat grew.
BURN!
The voice of flame screamed inside his skull now, making rational thought impossible.
It was the heat of naked, raw emotions, unfettered by moral considerations or civilized concerns.
Was this what it felt like when demons—urrkh—raged? Perhaps this was what they felt when they went into battle against mortals.
A blazing fire that shredded sanity, drove out all awareness, thought, even the need to ensure one’s own survival.
Only the flame itself remained, seeking to burn, to destroy, to ruin.
BURN!
The stonefire cried out one final time, the heat in Gwann’s head beyond endurance.
He was aware of more priests thrashing about, rising, sentries tearing off their helmets. He glimpsed one woman’s helmet, the metal melted to the texture of soft wax, sticking to her hair and scalp, ripping them away as she flung the headgear to the ground.
Stonefire blasts blazed out in all directions at once, seeking, finding, incinerating any and all flesh that came within range. Bodies exploded. Helmets and armor melted, then exploded outward in a deadly spray. Screams filled the air, vying with the stench of scorched flesh, burnt blood, and the iron taste of molten metal.
Gwann began to lose consciousness. He felt as if his brain was melting inside his skull. He found himself hammering at his own head with his fists, punching himself hard enough that the bruises would surely show for days afterward, as if seeking to break open the cage of bone and free the fire within.
The awareness of Vensera starting to rise distracted him. Some deep part of him, overwhelmed though he was by the terrors unfolding all around, made him lunge out and grab her waist, yanking her down hard. She stumbled back, and he fell upon her as a blast of red rage passed through the space they had occupied only a fraction of an instant before. He would find later that the hair on the back and top of his head had been burned off, leaving a blistering red patch that would never heal completely, but his speedy action saved her life.
The altar and the space around it was a festering place of hellish heat, smoke, and burned flesh.
Lying on his back now, head ringing from the burn and from the impact with Vensera’s armor, Gwann saw only thick grey smoke boiling above and around.
Slowly, by degrees, he came to understand that the heat was dissipating, the searing agony in his brain receding, the glow from the stonefire fading.
Something was happening in the pentangle.
Vensera sat up carefully, helping him up to a sitting position as well. Her arms and strength comforted him, helped ease the return to full self-awareness. He regained rationality, remembering who he was and why he was there. All the mundane, mortal miseries of existence that the stonefire had seared out of his head returned.
The Ritual of Summoning.
He grew aware of something moving within the cloud of smoke.
Within the pentangle.
In the altar.
Had the ritual succeeded?
He felt a blast of wind. For an instant, his skin registered it as intense heat. Only when he saw Vensera’s breath condensing as she exhaled and saw a matching puff from his mouth did he realize it was icy cold, like the blow from a blizzard in the Coldheart Mountains. Gwannland’s coldest winter nights never came close to freezing, so whatever this was, it was no natural phenomenon.
A portal had been opened.
Even through the grey haze, he could see movement and a light. A cold dark blue light the size and shape of a large cave, perhaps four yards high and five or six yards wide. Around it was whiteness, utter whiteness.
Whatever that place was, it was frigid, covered in snow.
Within the darker bluish hole in the whiteness, a shape was moving.
He strained to see through the haze.
The ritual had succeeded.
Something or someone was coming through.
The shape moved out of the darkness and into the pentangle.
The world shifted for an instant. Like a single tremor in an earthquake. A sliding of reality.
He felt the lurching sensation within himself, as if all his organs had shifted a fraction to one side, then settled back in their original places. Vensera exhaled, and one of the surviving priests faltered, hands raised as if to exalt a divinity.
The other priests rose as well.
None were being burnt. It seemed the threat of stonefire had passed.
Vensera rose to her feet. Gwann’s heart skipped. He flinched in anticipation of a blast from the stonefire.
Nothing happened to her.
She stood erect, staring at the dark shape that had emerged from the portal.
Slowly, cautiously, Gwann rose as well.
The figure moved through the swirling haze.
It stood before them, magnificent, terrible, darkly beautiful.
“Who . . .” Gwann swallowed, took in a breath, then tried again. “Who are you?”
The figure stood silently for a long moment.
Around them, the priests and sentries—those few who had survived—were standing with arms raised in salutation. The priests were chanting the Mantra of Gratitude. As they finished, they lowered their arms all the way down, bending from the waist until the tips of their fingers touched the ground. They remained that way, eyes cast downward, in the traditional gesture of submission.
Gwann realized he was in the presence of a stone god—or at the very least, a demigod.
The ritual had worked.
His wish had been granted.
A savior was given unto them.
“Are you a god?” he asked now, when it appeared that no reply to his first question was forthcoming.
A delicate tinkling and susurration came in response. It was followed almost immediately by the sound of a feminine voice.
“No.”
Another figure had emerged from the portal.
Gwann blinked in surprise.
A pair of delicate ankles adorned with tiny silvery bells were the first thing he saw. While not actually supplicating himself as the priests and sentries were doing, he had instinctively lowered his gaze. He didn’t know the protocol for greeting a stone god or demigod, but his own faith required one to be humble in the presence of divinity.
So it was that the first thing he saw was her feet.
“We are not,” she said in a voice as silvery and clear as the bells on her feet.
He raised his eyes, surprised by the answer, and the use of his own tongue. He had expected high Ashcrit, the antiquated language of the scrolls, or at the very least the Old Tongue used in the Burnt Empire. Not his own common dialect, spoken only by the people in this godforsaken part of the world.
She was young, handsome, with a regal bearing. Her skin was the color of burnt wood. Her eyes, banked fires. Her limbs, her body, as lithe and toned as Vensera’s warrior physique, but also with a feminine softness about it. Her eyes were rimmed with kohl, her lips glossed with rouge, her hair wild and untamable, a beautiful beast unto itself.
She smiled at him. There was something mischievous about her smile, as if she was considering a private joke.
“We are something more,” she said simply.
Then she came forward.
Gwann sensed Vensera flinch, her hand instinctively falling to her sword hilt.
The stranger noticed and included Vensera in her smile.
“Mother,” she said.
Vensera’s hand left her sword hilt. Her mouth opened in surprise.
Gwann stared openly now, unable to look away from the woman’s compelling gaze.
“I am your daughter,” she said now, first addressing herself to Vensera, then to Gwann.
She spread her arms, including them both in a figurative embrace.
“I have answered your summons.”
Then she joined her palms together and bowed low from the waist.
“I am here now. From this day on, you will fear nothing and want for nothing.”
Gwann heard a choking sound.
It came from his own throat.
He was crying. With joy, with disbelief.
The ritual had worked!
He held up his palm in the traditional parental gesture of blessing. “Live long, live well,” he said, uttering the words parents and elders had said to their youngers for millennia in Gwannland, as well as across Arthaloka. Some traditions were universal.
He heard Vensera echo the words, her own palm held out beside his own.
The young woman straightened, her palms still joined, eyes lowered, and inclined her head to acknowledge their blessings.
Then she turned and acknowledged the rest of the gathering.
Raising her voice, she said aloud, “We are the Given Avatars.”
A reverential response rose from the priests and sentries around the pentangle. The smoky haze had cleared now and Gwann could see everyone once again. He noted distractedly that the stonefire was gone, leaving only a tiny reddish-black mark on the ground. So too was the portal.
All that remained was this young woman and the young man standing behind her silently.
The Given Avatars.
“Have you names?” he heard Vensera ask hesitantly. “Or shall we provide them for you?”
The woman—our daughter, Gwann thought, through his dazzlement—inclined her head and said, “I shall choose for us.”
Her tone was gentle and pleasing, but also decisive.
She turned to indicate the young man standing beside her, tall, proud, as magnificent as she herself, fully armored and armed, like a warrior ready for battle. His own steely eyes met hers. He stood impassively as she raised a hand to touch his face affectionately.
She paused, tilting her head a fraction of an angle. Again, that sense of inward consideration, as if searching for a way to explain the inexplicable in an idiom comprehensible to mere mortals.
We are something more. What could be more than a god?
“He is a portion of myself,” she went on, “a part of me yet apart from me. I shall call him brother in this life. It is close enough. I speak for both of us. All that he hears, I hear. All he sees, I see. Everything he tastes, I taste. Anything he smells, I smell. Any and everything he feels . . . everything he experiences, I experience as well. We are as one, though he thinks for himself as well and can act independently if he desires. Always, I am the voice that speaks for us both.”
She raised her arms, raising her gaze as well, to the sky.
“I name him Drishya.”
The priests chanted the Ashcrit word of acknowledgment: “Sidh! Sidh!” It was one of the few Ashcrit words Gwann knew himself, and was the traditional way of showing respect for an excellent choice. It also meant “auspicious.”
The young woman smiled, acknowledging the priests, and turned a full circle, letting everyone present see her clearly.
“I am Krushni,” she said.