Back by the fire, a bald man with a grey beard chuckled. “Looks like we missed a little rabbit. Careful Cinder, his teeth may be sharp.”
The one called Cinder sheathed his sword with the sound of a tree cracking under the weight of winter ice. Keeping his distance, he knelt. Again I was reminded of the way mercury moved. Now on eye level with me, his expression grew concerned behind his matte-black eyes. “What’s your name, boy?”
I stood there, mute. Frozen as a startled fawn.
Cinder sighed and dropped his gaze to the ground for a moment. When he looked back up at me I saw pity staring at me with hollow eyes.
“Young man,” he said, “wherever are your parents?” He held my gaze for a moment and then looked over his shoulder back toward the fire where the others sat.
“Does anyone know where his parents are?”
Some of them smiled, hard and brittle, as if enjoying a particularly good joke. One or two of them laughed aloud. Cinder turned back to me and the pity fell away like a cracked mask, leaving only the nightmare smile upon his face.
“Is this your parents’ fire?” he asked with a terrible delight in his voice.
I nodded numbly.
His smile slowly faded. Expressionless, he looked deep into me. His voice was quiet, cold, and sharp. “Someone’s parents,” he said, “have been singing entirely the wrong sort of songs.”
“Cinder.” A cool voice came from the direction of the fire.
His black eyes narrowed in irritation. “What?” he hissed.
“You are approaching my displeasure. This one has done nothing. Send him to the soft and painless blanket of his sleep.” The cool voice caught slightly on the last word, as if it were difficult to say.
The voice came from a man who sat apart from the rest, wrapped in shadow at the edge of the fire. Though the sky was still bright with sunset and nothing stood between the fire and where he sat, shadow pooled around him like thick oil. The fire snapped and danced, lively and warm, tinged with blue, but no flicker of its light came close to him. The shadow gathered thicker around his head. I could catch a glimpse of a deep cowl like some priests wear, but underneath the shadows were so deep it was like looking down a well at midnight.
Cinder glanced briefly at the shadowed man, then turned away. “You are as good as a watcher, Haliax,” he snapped.
“And you seem to forget our purpose,” the dark man said, his cool voice sharpening. “Or does your purpose simply differ from my own?” The last words were spoken carefully, as if they held special significance.
Cinder’s arrogance left him in a second, like water poured from a bucket. “No,” he said, turning back toward the fire. “No, certainly not.”
“That is good. I hate to think of our long acquaintance coming to an end.”
“As do I.”
“Refresh me again as to our relationship, Cinder,” the shadowed man said, a deep sliver of anger running through his patient tone.
“I…I am in your service….” Cinder made a placating gesture.
“You are a tool in my hand,” the shadowed man interrupted gently. “Nothing more.”
A hint of defiance touched Cinder’s expression. He paused. “I wo—”
The soft voice went as hard as a rod of Ramston steel. “Ferula.”
Cinder’s quicksilver grace disappeared. He staggered, his body suddenly rigid with pain.
“You are a tool in my hand,” the cool voice repeated. “Say it.”
Cinder’s jaw clenched angrily for a moment, then he convulsed and cried out, sounding more like a wounded animal than a man. “I am a tool in your hand,” he gasped.
“Lord Haliax.”
“I am a tool in your hand, Lord Haliax,” Cinder amended as he crumpled, trembling, to his knees.
“Who knows the inner turnings of your name, Cinder?” The words were spoken with a slow patience, like a schoolmaster reciting a forgotten lesson.
Cinder wrapped shaking arms around his midsection and hunched over, closing his eyes. “You, Lord Haliax.”
“Who keeps you safe from the Amyr? The singers? The Sithe? From all that would harm you in the world?” Haliax asked with calm politeness, as if genuinely curious as to what the answer might be.
“You, Lord Haliax.” Cinder’s voice was a quiet shred of pain.
“And whose purpose do you serve?”
“Your purpose, Lord Haliax.” The words were choked out. “Yours. None other.” The tension left the air and Cinder’s body suddenly went slack. He fell forward onto his hands and beads of sweat fell from his face to patter on the ground like rain. His white hair hung limp around his face. “Thank you, lord,” he gasped out earnestly. “I will not forget again.”
“You will. You are too fond of your little cruelties. All of you.” Haliax’s hooded face swept back and forth to look at each of the figures sitting around the fire. They stirred uncomfortably. “I am glad I decided to accompany you today. You are straying, indulging in whimsy. Some of you seem to have forgotten what it is we seek, what we wish to achieve.” The others sitting around the fire stirred uneasily.
The hood turned back to Cinder. “But you have my forgiveness. Perhaps if not for these remindings, it would be I who would forget.” There was an edge to the last of his words. “Now, finish what—” His cool voice trailed away as his shadowed hood slowly tilted to look toward the sky. There was an expectant silence.
Those sitting around the fire grew perfectly still, their expressions intent. In unison they tilted their heads as if looking at the same point in the twilit sky. As if trying to catch the scent of something on the wind.
A feeling of being watched pulled at my attention. I felt a tenseness, a subtle change in the texture of the air. I focused on it, glad for the distraction, glad for anything that might keep me from thinking clearly for just a few more seconds.
“They come,” Haliax said quietly. He stood, and shadow seemed to boil outward from him like a dark fog. “Quickly. To me.”
The others rose from their seats around the fire. Cinder scrambled to his feet and staggered a half dozen steps toward the fire.
Haliax spread his arms and the shadow surrounding him bloomed like a flower unfolding. Then, each of the others turned with a studied ease and took a step toward Haliax, into the shadow surrounding him. But as their feet came down they slowed, and gently, as if they were made of sand with wind blowing across them, they faded away. Only Cinder looked back, a hint of anger in his nightmare eyes.
Then they were gone.
I will not burden you with what followed. How I ran from body to body, frantically feeling for the signs of life as Ben had taught me. My futile attempt at digging a grave. How I scrabbled in the dirt until my fingers were bloody and raw. How I found my parents….