Queen of Fire

The chieftain dropped one of his axes to catch the gem as Vaelin tossed it to him, eyes wide with instant fascination. The warriors on either side of him forgot their discipline to crowd round, every face lit with an enthralled greed. Pertak snarled something, raising his remaining axe in warning, and they shrank back, though their gaze returned continually to the ruby.

 

Pertak spoke again, directing his question to Vaelin as he held the ruby up to the light. “He wants to know what power it holds,” Astorek translated, a faint note of contempt colouring his voice.

 

“The mountains are rich in ore,” Erlin said, “but not gems. They have a certain irrational regard for them.”

 

“Tell him it has the power to capture men’s souls,” Vaelin said. “He really shouldn’t stare at it for too long.”

 

A brief gleam of fear shone in the chieftain’s eyes as Erlin related the warning, his fist closing over the stone in a fierce grip before he raised his gaze to Vaelin, squinting in contemplation. He grunted a short clipped sentence and, with considerable deliberation, turned his back and walked towards the settlement, his small host following close, all concern at the arrival of such a large body of intruders now apparently vanished.

 

“You may stay one day and one night,” Erlin said. “A most generous concession, I must say.”

 

“Is that enough?” Vaelin asked him. “For our purposes?”

 

Erlin looked up at the mountain towering above the settlement, the flattened summit part obscured by a thin mist. “You’ll find time loses its meaning here, brother.”

 

? ? ?

 

He forbade anyone but Vaelin from accompanying him, though Dahrena and the other Gifted protested loudly. “We have come so far,” Cara said. “To be denied knowledge now . . .”

 

“I seek to preserve,” Erlin broke in, “not to deny. Trust me, you would not thank me for this knowledge.”

 

He led Vaelin to a track that curved around the Laretha settlement to the base of the mountain, halting amidst a cluster of ruins. Vaelin scanned the granite blocks and part-tumbled walls, finding a familiarity in the way they had been shaped, the elegance of their line and the wind-blasted motifs carved into the stone. “The Fallen City,” he said. “This place was built by the same hands.”

 

“Not quite,” Erlin replied. “Though they shared the same language.” He gestured to a stairwell rising from the ruins to join with the flank of the mountain, Vaelin’s eyes picking out more steps carved into the stone, ascending in a winding track all the way to the top. “And the same gods.”

 

“So,” Erlin said as they climbed, the steps damp from the perennial mist and the air growing chill around them, “you no longer hold to the Faith.”

 

“A man can’t hold to a lie.”

 

“The Faith was never a lie. Confused in some regards, overly wedded to dogma in others. But having seen what the rest of the world has to offer in regards to the divine, I find it suits me well enough.”

 

“When we first met you said you had no choice but to follow the Faith. When I came to understand who you were I thought you meant the legend was true, the Departed had cursed you for denying the Faith.”

 

“Cursed? I thought so for a long time, when I was driven from the village of my birth, still seemingly a man in his thirties whilst those I had grown up with became ever more stooped and wrinkled. My wife was chief among my persecutors, grown bitter with envy at my continued youth, hating me for the grey in her hair and the absence of lust in my gaze. I had never been particularly observant of the Faith, mouthing the catechisms without real thought as to their meaning, occasionally muttering caustic words at the brothers and their tedious moralising. ‘Denier!’ my hating wife called me, desperate to find reason in this mystery. ‘The Departed have cursed you.’ I suppose that’s where it all began, a bitter old woman’s insult birthing a legend.”

 

“So you never heard their voice? You were not denied the Beyond?”

 

Erlin paused, breath misting as his face became sombre. “Oh I heard them, but not until many years later. Despite appearances, brother, I am not in fact immune to death. I do not age and I do not sicken. But without food I starve, and if cut, I bleed the same as any man. I can die, and once, long ago, I did. Or at least came so close it makes scant difference.

 

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