The King's Summons Read online

  King Jasper pulled a braided rope, and five sets of curtains opened all at once, flooding the room with light. Sunbeams shone through five beautiful stained glass windows encircling the room, each depicting one of King Jasper’s daughters: Princesses Sapphire, Emerald, Citrine, Ruby, and of course, Amethyst.

  “The Prophecy of the Five,” whispered Blaze. She knew it by heart, just as most Crystalians did.

  “And they are missing, every last one,” said King Jasper. His eyes looked sad.

  “Missing?”

  “Why is everyone always so surprised when I say that?” asked King Jasper.

  “Because you’re their dad, right? They’re not like the keys to the coach. How did you lose all five?”

  King Jasper’s face darkened. Blaze felt a stab of guilt. Maybe she had gone too far.

  So she leaned over the map.

  “Do you know what it’s like to be alone in this world?” King Jasper asked her. He looked serious.

  Blaze felt her heart twist. She thought of Midway, her home. It had been destroyed long ago. Her parents were gone. They had been for a long, long time. And the only family she had left—the Order of Ember—had banished her. “Yes,” she said, almost in a whisper. She was staring at the place where Midway should have been on the king’s map. She knew all too well what it was like to be alone.

  “My eldest, Princess Sapphire, heir to the throne, is gone,” said King Jasper.

  Blaze’s heart leapt at the mention of Princess Sapphire. She jumped to her feet. The spark, unbidden, lit in her chest. Memories flooded into her mind. Orcs. Midway. Burning.

  “The enemy is moving in the Frostbyte Reach. Something is at play which I cannot discern—the distance is too great and the realm too vast for reliable communication,” said King Jasper.

  “Princess Sapphire—you allowed her to go?” said Blaze. Of course Princess Sapphire was gone. She was one of the five after all.

  King Jasper nodded.

  “And she hasn’t—she’s not . . .”

  “No word,” said the king. “In months.” He turned and gripped the edge of a bookshelf laden with ancient tomes as thick as his fist.

  “I’m sure . . .” Blaze began, but the words did not form on her lips. She wasn’t sure of anything. The Frostbyte Reach was dangerous.

  But Princess Sapphire? If anyone in all Crystalia could survive in the Reach, it was her.

  Blaze had met her only once. That chance encounter had been enough to convince Blaze that there was no greater warrior in all the realm.

  She blinked, focusing again on the king. “Why did you choose me?”

  “This threat within the Frostbyte Reach, as yet unrevealed, might be my realm’s undoing. I cannot fight two fronts—the Nether Elf hordes from the Midnight Tower on the one hand, and the orcs of the Frostbyte Reach on the other.”

  “But why me?”

  King Jasper looked at her. He was studying her. “Why indeed?” he asked.

  “I’m not . . .” Blaze began to say that she was no longer a member of the Order but couldn’t force the words from her lips.

  “I was told you were the one for the job,” said the king.

  That was curious. “Who would have said that?” she asked. There wasn’t anyone who believed in her. At least, they hadn’t before.

  The king looked solemn. “For now, let it be enough to know that I chose you.”

  Blaze looked down at her hands.

  “Young one, I cannot change your past. But I need your help, nonetheless. I’m willing to offer three of my personal guards to—”

  “I don’t need their help,” Blaze said quickly.

  King Jasper smiled. “I admire your bravery. But understand, I have seen many things. War. Sorcery. Dragons. You must trust me, child. This task you cannot do alone.”

  “I’m not safe,” Blaze said, through faltering lips. “I . . . I can’t control the fire.”

  King Jasper took in a long breath. Blaze felt as though the Goddess herself were weighing her soul.

  Just say something. She couldn’t bear the silence.

  At last he turned. Drawing a key from under his brightly embroidered tunic, he went to the fourth of five small jeweled boxes on a long shelf. He opened it and withdrew a glittering object.

  Turning back to Blaze, he extended his hand and opened it. In his palm was a bright pink heart-shaped locket.

  Blaze didn’t know what to think. Of all the trinkets to offer her, this prissy bauble?

  “Of this I am sure, former mage of the Order of Ember. You cannot succeed alone. So, I offer you this.”

  The locket was held on a woven, white lace necklace.

  “I really couldn’t,” Blaze said, wincing.

  “This amulet—”

  “It belongs to Princess Ruby, doesn’t it?” Blaze said. Princess Ruby, the king’s fourth daughter, was the pretty princess of pink perfection herself. This object could only belong to her.

  “Perhaps,” the king admitted with a wry smile. “It is a powerful object, which you can open only when you are twice your strength.” He held the lace necklace out with both hands.

  Blaze didn’t know what to say. This was not her style. But she couldn’t refuse a gift from the king. Not here in his war room. She bowed her head, and King Jasper bestowed upon her the prissiest, most girlie jewelry she had ever seen in her life.

  “Thank you.” Blaze nearly choked on the words.

  Princess Sapphire . . . Blaze clutched the locket, recalling the extraordinary events of the day she had met Princess Sapphire. Does he know? She ventured a question. “Sire, do you know where I’m from?”

  The king just smiled, his eyes twinkling.

  “Midway,” said Blaze. She searched for a reaction in his face. She found none.

  “I’ve heard of it,” he said.

  Of course he’d heard of it. He was the king.

  Mere coincidence? To summon me to save her . . . after all this time. It was enough to make her wonder if another hand was involved. But that would be even more remarkable. Could the Goddess still be working her magic, weaving the tapestry of her creations—tying together those two threads that touched so long before?

  “The Goddess has not abandoned us,” King Jasper said, as he turned to a heavy wooden door at the back of the war room. He slid aside the heavy bar locking it and pushed the door open.

  I hope he’s right.

  Blaze followed King Jasper down a winding staircase. He opened another heavy door. On the other side was a vast chamber lined by shimmering crystals the size of watermelons. A bent old magician stood behind one, beads of sweat clinging to his brow, his hands passing over the crystal until it conjured a bright sphere of light.

  Travel by portal from the Castle was something Blaze had only ever heard rumors about. It was either very costly in magic to operate or very dangerous—or both.

  The magician spoke a spell in a strange language Blaze did not recognize. The swirling sphere of light wrapped itself into a vortex of color until the center became as white as driven snow. And it probably was.

  All sound in the room vanished. It was as though Blaze had simply been cut off from the rest of the Castle.

  A quartermaster shoved a rucksack full of supplies into Blaze’s hands.

  “Go to the village of Hetsa. You will find allies there. I ask you, as your king—as a father—find my daughter,” King Jasper said.

  Blaze looked him in the eye. “I accept,” she said quietly. This time she said it with resolve. She stepped through the glowing portal.

  Suddenly, she was falling through space and time. Her stomach lurched within her. A burst of white and blue flashed around her, and Blaze found herself perched high on a cliff in a sheltered alcove lined by crystals just like those from the Castle’s chamber. A path led upward, carved into the side of a steep cliff, surrounded by frozen waterfalls.

  In a single heartbeat, she’d been transporte
d to the Frostbyte Reach.

  Chapter 4: Frostbyte Reach

  It was ten years ago when Blaze saw her first orc.

  Fire. Walls and ceiling ablaze. She was trapped. Her own screams echoed in her ears, frantically calling for help, only to be drowned out by the grunts and deep-throated war cries of the enormous creatures ransacking her village.

  And then it all happened. The flaming door broke apart, and a girl all clad in armor rolled across the floor. She wore gauntlets and carried a sword and shield.

  She could not have been more than ten years older than Blaze, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old. Her blue-gray armor shone in the flickering blaze set by the marauding orcs. “Come on!” the girl screamed, beckoning to her. “The roof is going to—”

  The center beam broke, and the armored girl reflexively raised her shield. The roof beam slammed into the girl, driving her down to one knee.

  “Climb under me!” she shouted.

  Blaze could still feel the fear that had paralyzed her.

  The girl sheathed her sword and shoved back a piece of burning wood with her gauntleted hand. “Got to . . . unggh,” she strained.

  Panic seized Blaze, and she reached out to help, pressing her own hands against the burning wood.

  The girl’s eyes widened in panic. She stared at Blaze’s smoldering palm. Blaze drew back her hand. Had she done something wrong?

  Then the girl laughed. “You have the spark!—listen to me. I’m going to get you out of here. I’m going to protect you.”

  “But the orcs—they . . .”

  “Just come with me. You have a fire within,” she grunted under the load of burning timbers. “Please. I promise to get you out of here. You have the spark. You must live so that someday you can become an Ember Mage. I am Princess Sapphire. I swear it will be done.”

  She sounded so certain, Blaze couldn’t help but believe her. She crawled under the girl’s legs and out into the street.

  Princess Sapphire rolled clear of the rubble just as the rest of the house came tumbling down.

  “You’re safe . . .” Princess Sapphire started to say, when four huge orcs spotted them from farther up the road.

  They charged.

  Princess Sapphire thrust Blaze backward. “Run!”

  The princess drew a second sword and dropped into a defensive stance. She had lost her shield in the burning house.

  Was she really going to fight them? Four full-grown orcs? Blaze had never seen anything like it in her life.

  It really was the Princess Sapphire; Blaze was sure of it. Everything about her—strength, courage, the way she moved, her armor, the glowing blue jewels.

  But where were her guards?

  Blaze should have run, but she stood rooted to the spot, coughing the smoke from her lungs as the great orcs, shoulders twice as wide as a man, heads the size of an ox’s, raised their clubs and hammers and bellowed their war cries.

  Their horrible faces burned into her memory. Each warrior bore a tattoo of a claw that wrapped around one eye—the infamous raiders of the Crook-Eye tribe.

  The young princess stood her ground and bellowed her own cry. “Come to me, beasts!”

  The first orc raised its club and swung. Princess Sapphire hurdled the club, swiveling one leg above the other and twisting in midair. Her leaping roundhouse kick slammed directly into the charging orc’s face, while its errant swing crashed into the second orc, knocking it through the burning wall of Blaze’s home.

  Blaze screamed as the third orc raised its great hammer and rained a crushing blow down on the princess.

  But the princess’s sword drew an edge of blue fire and sliced straight through the hammer’s handle, while her other blade severed the suspenders holding up the orc’s buckskin trousers. The raider tripped over its pants and fell on its face. Princess Sapphire’s next swing came down on the fourth orc before it could raise its great sword. Her blow hit the orc’s metal helmet like a hammer, and the helmet rang out like a bell. The tusked orc’s eyes rolled back, and it fell like a sack of coal.

  Blaze’s jaw dropped. The teen princess had single handedly knocked out four orc warriors.

  “Run!” Princess Sapphire commanded.

  Blaze obeyed, retreating from the embattled village as two dozen royal cavaliers on horseback charged down the hill, the thunder of their horses’ hooves drowning out all else.

  The young Princess Sapphire, by riding ahead of her men, had saved Blaze’s life. She had taken a huge risk.

  And that had awoken Blaze’s Ember spark. It was that day that she set on the path to become an Ember Mage.

  And now Princess Sapphire was missing.

  Blaze trekked through the snow of the Frostbyte Reach, wrapping her blue cloak tight around her.

  First Princess Amethyst and now Princess Sapphire—how could a king lose a princess of prophecy? It wasn’t like misplacing a shoe—the entire fate of Crystalia depended on all five princesses.

  And why send a reject Ember Mage? Did the king really not have another Hero to send?

  King Jasper was a seasoned tactician and, arguably, as great a master of lore as the long-lived elves. There had to be method to his madness.

  Or was there? Could it be that his daughters’ disappearances had brought on actual madness?

  Blaze’s inner fire had taken her to the halls of the Order of Ember. And when the fire had grown out of control, she had been cast out. She should have had a new family of mages to accept her. Instead, she had only shame, disappointment, and a firsthand knowledge of what she could not have.

  And now she was walking alone in the mountains. All alone.

  Blaze stopped on a ridge to catch her breath. If only travel by portal was more precise. They could have sent her straight to Hetsa. But they knew better than that. Better to land at the crystal landing point than to risk getting dropped off the side of a cliff.

  In the distance, she could barely see the last hint of the green plains that spread out from the base of the Frostbyte peaks.

  These were the rolling, grassy hills and patches of shaded forest she had once called home.

  Somewhere in those grassy hills, too far to see, was the tiny speck that was her home village of Midway—the exact midpoint on the road from Crystalia Castle to Yuyang. Beyond that were the Wandering Monk Mountains, rising in the distance, with the beautiful Path of 1,000 Shrines carved into their faces.

  Not far from the village, a private cemetery with two headstones bore the names of her parents killed by Crook-Eye Orc raiders.

  “Hello, Pa. Hello, Mum.”

  She spoke to them as though their graves lay before her. Somehow, the distance made it easier to find the words.

  Blaze drew in a breath and held it before uncorking her bottled-up emotion. “I got kicked out of the Order—I was too angry. Too angry! Anger is what gives a mage their power. I don’t understand. All I ever wanted was to stand up to the enemy—to fight the ones who took you from me. All I ever wanted was to send them back to the Dark Realm where they belong.”

  She shoved her hands into the oversized pockets of her travel cloak. “And now I’m going on a job that nobody else wanted—why else would King Jasper have asked me—and I’ll probably die in the snow, and nobody will ever find me.”

  She pulled her blue cloak tight around her. It was the last tangible evidence of the Order she had once belonged to. It was all she had left. With a sigh, she trudged forward in the snow.

  Her foot fell deeper than usual. She looked down, expecting to see a crevasse opening up in front of her.

  It wasn’t a crevasse. It was only a footprint.

  A large footprint.

  Not human.

  Her palms tingled with sweat as her stomach twisted into a knot of anxiety.

  How long had it been since she had seen one—ten years?

  An orc.

  Blaze carefully lifted her foot and stepped forward. There was another footp
rint in front of the first. It was a long stride, but not as long as she had expected. She took another step. Large feet, but medium pace for an orc—so it was growing but not full-grown.

  This was an adolescent orc.

  Blaze’s palms tingled with a mixture of fear and excitement.

  A scout perhaps?

  Blaze itched to ignite the spark. She felt her temper rising into rage. Did she really dare fight an orc alone? If she saw one, she was almost certain it would come to that. She would have to defend herself.

  But there was no guarantee how far away the lone orc was. She didn’t want to flame out before reaching her quarry.

  Blaze hurried ahead, following the footsteps down a set of switchbacks and charging around a large outcropping.

  The slope shallowed into a bowl where the pines dotting the landscape grew low and dense. The footsteps in the snow continued into a tight grove.

  She would either have to scale a steep escarpment on the rock face or go lower on the slope where a snow slide would put her far down the hill and away from her quarry.

  Blaze lugged her pack across the bowl, heading directly for the copse of pines.

  As she stepped between the trees, she found that several of the trunks shared a common base, like fingers growing from a hand. Other trunks had grown sideways and even buried themselves in the ground, as if twisted by some unseen force. There was no snow here, which was strange given the shade. The rocks underfoot were riddled with a shaggy moss and crumbled under her feet.

  Something was wrong about this place.

  Then she saw the skull.

  The enormous white bone skull sat directly in her path. Trees curled over it from both sides in an ominous arch. The skull bore long fangs—too large for an orc.

  Perhaps a gnoll? The skull was large enough to engulf her entire head if she were to stick her neck in it.

  That was not going to happen.

  The ground around the skull was littered with what looked like fragments of fine parchment. As she stepped forward, she noticed the pattern of scales.

  Not parchment. Skin shed from some very large reptile.