The orc. Her quarry. Only now, she had nothing left.
She’d been so stupid. And he’d waited until after the battle—after she had spent her fire and had nothing left.
The orc was draped in a cloak; his rocklike head was bare, with twin tusks protruding up from his bottom lip. In his hand was what looked like a great club. The orc’s face was marred by a tattoo that curled around his right eye.
Blaze gasped.
A Crook-Eye.
All her life she had waited for this moment, for revenge. And now she had no strength. She was at the mercy of this monster.
She stared daggers at the creature. Rage filled her. A Crook-Eye! She would fight him with her fists if she had to.
But there was no chance in that. Blaze had fought men before. Even normal human men were far stronger than a teenager like her. And this orc could toss a man as far as he wished.
The orc raised his staff and moved his arm to the side, pointing.
“This is the way. You cannot go that way,” he said, cocking his head back toward what was left of the spawning point.
What? Blaze was confused. This giant orc was giving her directions?
“Hah. I won’t follow you—I’m not stupid.”
The orc let his arm fall. “You are tired? I will carry you.” He began clomping down the rise toward her.
Blaze scrambled backward, only to trip and fall backward onto her pack, like an upturned tortoise. With his huge strides the orc was by her side before she could get free of the pack’s straps.
She hadn’t been so close to one of the hideous allies of the Dark Consul since that day in her village ten years ago. Now she was staring him in the face. His nose was squat and broad, his jaw wide and heavy. His head was gray, and his hulking forearms rippled with muscles, like twisted tree trunks. He reached for her with hands covered by boney spikes on the backs of his knuckles. There was an odd, misshapen lump under his cloak on one side, like he had something slung over his shoulder underneath the cloth.
Blaze lashed out with a kick.
The orc was astonishingly fast. He snatched her leg and hauled her upside down. “Why human come here?”
Blaze shivered. “To kill orcs.” She couldn’t tell him her true reason.
The orc turned his gaze to the still-smoking remnants of the corrupted trees surrounding the spawning point. What he had in reaction speed, he more than made up for in lack of thinking power. For a few seconds, he mulled the scene.
“You did not climb mountain—Dreck knows if being followed.”
“Put me down!” Blaze thrashed to free herself.
The orc ignored her and perused the scene again. “How you get here?”
Blaze tried to swing a punch at the orc’s neck, but he deftly swung her—pack and all—off to one side. “Hmmm. Fire magic scare kobolds.” He looked at her, and Blaze, though upside-down, recognized how different this orc was from the ones who had raided her village. His tusks were far smaller, his eyes a vibrant green. There was something almost kind in the creature’s features. Blaze had to look away rather than admit it.
The orc was a magnificent creation. Powerful, like her, but somehow gentle and naive, and a slow thinker. Orcs were not stupid. But this one . . . seemed to struggle.
He dropped her on her head in the snow.
Blaze rolled to her feet and ran for it.
The orc kept pace beside her at what seemed like a brisk walk.
“Get away!” she shrieked.
The orc swung his staff, blocking her path. “Goddess send you.”
“What?” Blaze couldn’t believe her ears.
“Stars moving,” said the orc, pointing to the sky. “Goddess is moving.”
How dare an orc demon speak of the Goddess.
“Who bring you here?” he asked.
“None of your business,” Blaze snapped as she desperately tried to get away.
The orc gave a snort of a laugh. “Go fast, little one. Far to go. Dreck show you.”
“Little one!” Blaze scampered ahead, trying to distance herself from this strange orc. “You’re not much for an orc anyway—I’ve seen bigger warriors.”
“Dreck not warrior.”
Blaze nearly tripped over her own feet. “Well—scout.”
“Dreck tracker.”
“A tracker—you hunt humans?” she asked.
“Tracker of great mystery. Seeker of Goddess. Dreck . . . Wandering Monk-in-training.” He opened his cloak to reveal the simple brown garments of a monk. A strange, thick iron hoop hung over one shoulder and across his chest like a sling. It was covered in runes, and the iron was dark. It struck Blaze as very odd. Why would he carry something so heavy all this way? And what was it for?
But an orc-monk? “Have you lost your mind?” Blaze laughed out loud.
“Well. Dreck not monk yet. Haven’t traveled to Wandering Monk Mountains. But Dreck lose self. Not mind. Dreck find peace.”
Legends spoke of the time when the land of Crystalia had not known, nor feared, the Dark Consul’s power. But in her lifetime, the Dark Consul’s corrupting influence had reached even to the heartlands and twisted many creatures—such as the orcs—into monsters of darkness. Now none of the orc tribes followed the Goddess.
The unlikely Wandering Monk beckoned to a narrow trail that split off from the route Blaze had been following. “This way. Less travelers, less trouble,” Dreck said.
Blaze was too cold to argue. Certainly, this Dreck knew where he was going. Fine. If he wasn’t going to go away, she could use his knowledge of the land. She pulled her cloak tighter and fell into step beside the orc as snowflakes began to fall, covering their steps. A Crook-Eye Orc Tracker . . . monk?
After an hour, Dreck said, “Nice locket. Friend give you that?”
Blaze tucked the King’s locket under her shirt. “Not exactly.”
Blaze looked again at the much larger bulge underneath Dreck’s cloak. The giant iron ring.
“My name to the Crook-Eye tribe means big heart,” said Dreck.
“Is that your heart sticking out of your chest there?”
Dreck looked down, almost panicked, before realizing the enormous ring he wore under his robes was not, in fact, showing.
So it’s a secret. That’s more like it. He is hiding something.
“Does your name have a meaning?” Dreck asked.
“Of course not.” She didn’t know what it meant, unless trouble counted as a definition. “I’m Blaze.” She changed the subject. “Does this path lead to Hetsa?” The village of Hetsa was on the map the king had given her. Just the place King Jasper had told her to start.
“Yes,” said the orc. Now that he spoke, Blaze guessed he couldn’t have been much older than her. “Hetsa, far. Enemy know fire mage come now. No use big roads. Find own road.”
“All right,” Blaze said, suddenly glad for the company. “How much farther?”
The orc only opened his fanged mouth. She supposed the horrible expression was a smile.
“Don’t do that . . . please.”
Dreck laughed. “Goddess help you—send me.”
“I don’t think so. What do you know about the Goddess anyway? You’re a stinking orc raider.” Blaze tried to move as far away on the narrow trail as possible, but Dreck’s staff-club-thing shepherded her back to the middle.
“Dreck know nothing,” he said simply. “Dreck seeking path.”
Blaze glowered.
“You lose staff, Ember Mage?” he asked.
“Obviously, I’m not of the Order of Ember,” Blaze replied, regretting even more the company that she hadn’t the strength to avoid. “Not anymore.”
“You worst judge to self,” said the orc.
“You don’t know what I am,” Blaze said.
“You sure you know?”
Blaze had no answer for that. The princess had promised her that she would become an Ember Mage. Now she’d lost that path. It had been the only one she’d known. Without it, she didn’t know what she was.
“Open heart,” said the monk. “Goddess will show you how to see.”
It was a monk’s typical mumbo jumbo. “I can’t see with my heart.”
“Can’t feel with your eyes,” he said.
“Well, my heart doesn’t see. It makes fire when I’m angry—I can fight ice kobolds,” said Blaze.
“She make point.” He gave her a gape-mouthed grin. Then he reached into a pocket inside his fur-lined gray tunic.
With the parting of his robes, Blaze caught a better glimpse of the runes inscribed into the iron ring—they had been carved into every square inch of the metal. There was something else too: what looked like a dark stone set into the metal.
A huge black diamond. There were very few black diamonds that size in all Crystalia. Wars were fought over them. Nothing was as hard as diamond—and black diamond, with its tiny aggregated crystallites, was impossible to cleave.
But Dreck closed his robes again, covering the gem and runes. He handed her what looked like a piece of bark. “Eat.”
“Is it magic?” she asked.
“For some.” He smiled that horrible expression again. “It’s chocolate.”
Blaze’s eyes widened, and she bit into the frozen chocolate bar.
“Open your mouth to eat,” said the monk. “Open heart to see.”
“You don’t understand. I lock my heart to make fire,” Blaze said. “I lock in everything—anger, rage. That opens the path to the inner fire.”
“And the locket,” said the monk, gesturing to Blaze’s shirt. “Can open that?”
Blaze drew out the locket and pried at the latch. “Stupid thing won’t budge—probably broken.”
“Like your heart,” noted the orc.
“It’s not funny. You know nothing about being an Ember Mage.”
“Dreck know nothing,” he repeated.
Satisfied that she had won the argument, Blaze took another bite from the chocolate. It melted in her mouth and trickled satisfyingly down her throat, seemingly filling the void left by the extinguished inner fire. “I think this stuff is magic.”
“All is magic.” He opened his arms. “You need hug?”
Blaze put up hand. “Absolutely not.”
The teen orc laughed raucously loud. “You fight kobolds and afraid of hug?”
“I’m not afraid. I’m just . . .” Angry. She couldn’t afford to let go of that. Anger lit the spark. An Ember Mage required anger—a lot of it. That didn’t mix well with things like hugs and heart. But something else had her attention. A wisp of black smoke rose from behind the next peak.
“I thought this was supposed to be a rarely used trail,” Blaze said. “I really hope you’re going tell me that is a welcoming party.”
“Fire not good,” said the young orc. His eyes narrowed. “Stay close to Dreck.”
“Are you sure you want to go this way?” Blaze said. Seeing the smoke put her on edge. They weren’t alone.
“Enemy saw Blaze,” said the monk. “Sure to follow. To reach Hetsa, there is no turning back.”
As they hiked further into the trail that wound its way up into the towering, ice-frosted, black granite peaks of the Frostbyte Reach, Blaze found herself fighting a battle within her. Every instinct told her to reach for her magic, find the spark, store the energy, and blast this orc off the edge of a cliff.
Crook-Eye Orcs killed my parents—burned my village.
Yet, with the speed that orcs grew—even faster than humans—there was no chance this orc had been at Midway. And why did he want to become a monk?
“How long have you been a monk?” she asked.
“Five.”
“Five what?”
“Five . . . happy?” The orc gave her an enormous grin.
“Five years? Five days?”
“Five days.”
“I knew it. You’re just pretending—what are you really doing here?”
“Dreck seek greatest mystery in Frostbyte Reach. Come. I show you.”