A Darkness Forged in Fire Read online

  He ignored the bait, focusing instead on the fact that there was no tremble in her voice, no hint of fear at all. Not even the sound of a bone snapping flustered her as Jir tore through a rakke's pelvis. Perhaps, he conceded, what they say about women is true: They are tougher.

  "Is the army near?" Konowa asked.

  "They were three days by horse to the south, on the other side of the Jhubbuvore," she said, naming a river Konowa vaguely remembered crossing years earlier. "But that was over a week ago. Where they are now I do not know. We should start at once—you are clearly in no condition to fight off any more of those beasts."

  A tree cracked just outside the clearing.

  Konowa jumped to his feet so fast it felt as if he broke another rib. He stumbled to his musket and picked it up, spinning in a slow circle as he searched the edges of the clearing. Jir raised his muzzle from the inside of a rakke and growled in response.

  "What is it?" the woman whispered, the wicked-looking dagger magically reappearing in her right hand.

  "There were four rakkes," Konowa said, pointing the muzzle of the musket at the bodies, "but we only killed three."

  "Surely your bengar killed it somewhere nearby," the woman said, gesturing at Jir, who was looking questioningly at Konowa.

  Turning to Jir, Konowa made a clenched fist then threw his arm out and opened his hand wide. "Hunt," he commanded. The animal rumbled a deep sound and disappeared into the forest in a single bound.

  "Will he find it?" she asked, coming to stand next to Konowa even as she wrinkled her nose.

  Konowa kept his eyes on the trees, but was very aware of her presence beside him. Heat roiled off her like the open door of a smithy's furnace. Then again, it might have been the pain of his rib cage.

  "Maybe, maybe not. If that thing didn't look back it could be a long way from here." He spotted his cartridge pouch on the ground and walked over to it, deciding he'd better reload while he could.

  "You're not like any messenger I've ever seen before," he remarked while gingerly ramming a new charge and ball into the musket.

  The woman's eyes narrowed and the stiletto flashed as she twirled it in her hand.

  "Messenger? I am Visyna Tekoy, daughter of Almak Tekoy, governor of Hijlla Province and supplier to Her Majesty's Imperial Army and the Outer Territories Trading Company in these lands."

  "Ah, so your father's a sutler then?"

  "A sutler! Do I look like the daughter of some rag and bone merchant?"

  Konowa took a quick moment to run his eyes over her again. "Indeed you don't. Well, now, seeing as we've established how your father supports Her Majesty's troops, fair lady, pray tell in what manner do you service them?"

  Visyna's retort remained unspoken as Jir suddenly leaped back into the clearing. He sniffed the air for a moment and stretched, sheathing and unsheathing great curving claws that reflected the starlight with lethal intent. When he was finished he walked over to where they were standing and lifted a hind leg.

  Visyna yelled in protest, quickly stepping out of the way and into Konowa's arms.

  "It means he likes you," he said. He reached over and patted Jir on the head. The bengar began to purr and Konowa relaxed; the fourth rakke was long gone.

  "It's disgusting," she retorted.

  Konowa nodded and took a deep breath of her dark hair, grimacing with the effort. He imagined it was wonderfully perfumed, but the lingering odor of the skunk dragon and Jir's enthusiastic attempts to make half the known lands his own defeated the exercise.

  "I think you can let go now," she said. "Your musket is digging into me." "That's not my musket," Konowa replied, brandishing the weapon in his right hand in front of her while he kept his left around her waist. He pulled her a little closer. "You know, I did save your life tonight. In some parts, that sort of thing engenders a certain amount of…gratitude."

  Visyna stilled at the suggestion. She's not so high and mighty after all, Konowa thought, suddenly concerned that she might actually take him up on what had been no more than a bluff. A year in the forest or not, he was in no condition for that. Visyna turned around in his arm and faced him, her lips only inches from his. He was still wondering what they'd taste like when her fist slammed into his stomach, sitting him squarely on his backside.

  "You filthy pig! I am no harlot! And you, sir, are no officer."

  Tears streamed down Konowa's face as he gasped for breath and then he laughed, despite the pain.

  "You're right there, m'lady. I'm no officer, not anymore." He picked himself up from the ground for the second time that night. He hurt from head to toe and suddenly there was nothing even remotely funny about anything. "You take that piece of parchment with you the next time you use the powder room, because that's all it's good for. The elf on that scroll no longer exists."

  "You really are him, aren't you," Visyna said quietly. "You were the one who killed the Viceroy to save your people, and ours." She reached out a hand to touch his ruined left ear, but Konowa pulled away.

  "You think I'm a hero? Do heroes end up exiled in a bloody forest? No, my lady, you have it all wrong. I am one of the dyskara, the tainted ones marked by the Shadow Monarch. Just good enough to fight for the Empire, but never, ever to be trusted." A year of bitter resentment flared up. "Be afraid, my lady. Molten ore flows through my veins and daisies are poison to me. I live in caves like dwarven folk and eat raw meat off the bone." He ignored her crossed arms and scrunched-up nose and pressed on, needing to vent his anger at someone. "You see before you a spiritual descendant of the Shadow Monarch, the Horra Rikfa—oath breaker, the forsaker of the forest, delver of the deep magic long ago lost to this world. Fear me, O pure and righteous one. I was marked by Her, ruler of the High Forest where trees grow in unnatural and vile ways, and elves have little patience for asinine conversations."

  "Jarahta Mysor!" she yelled, swinging back her hand as if to slap him.

  "Easy there, my lady, no need for that kind of language." As fast as the anger had come, it bled away. He tried a smile, but she wasn't having it. "You have no idea what it's like to suffer under the foolishness of myths and legends. I left the Hyntaland to get away from all of that, but it follows me around like a plague."

  "Myths and legends?" she asked, shaking her head. "They don't look like either," she said, pointing to the dead rakkes.

  "No, they don't, but it doesn't matter. You wouldn't understand."

  "Really now?" Visyna said, her voice sharp, her eyes flashing. "The story of the elf-witch across the ocean is well known even here. The Empire brought more than oppression to my people, it also brought stories of the Zargul Iraxa, as we call Her, Seeker of the Darkness." She appeared to struggle for control of herself, then spoke again in a quieter voice. "Your ancestors forged a bond with the Wolf Oaks. They learned to harness the Wolf Oak's great power, using it to care for the natural order."

  "I know the legend," Konowa said, sighing.

  "Have you seen this forest realm of the Shadow Monarch?"

  Konowa carefully let out a breath in exasperation. "No, I mean, yes, but it's just a bunch of trees."

  "You went up there, then?"

  Konowa wanted to say yes to end this conversation, but looking into her eyes he found himself suddenly unable to lie. "No, no one goes up there, but that doesn't mean the legend is true…entirely."

  Visyna made a face then looked back at the rakkes. "And these creatures?"

  "I honestly don't know," Konowa said, realizing just how true that was. How did they know his name? "Maybe She did send them after me, or," he said, suspicion flaring in his mind, "maybe She sent them after someone else."

  Visyna's mouth formed a perfect O. "Me? You're mad. Clearly, some elves can be in the forest too long."

  He took a step toward her. "My senses are clear enough to know something here doesn't make sense. How is it you just happen to have a scroll calling me back to service?"

  "There are those who believe you can be of service again. Many of my peo
ple consider you a hero for what you did," she said, a note of admiration grudgingly modulating her voice.

  "That still doesn't explain you."

  Visyna looked as if she might take a swing at him, then relaxed. "Despite what you think, elves aren't the only people in tune with the natural world. I have…a gift, for finding things, so I was sent out to look for you."

  "Alone?" Konowa asked, refusing to believe any of this.

  "Not alone," she said quietly, lowering her eyes. "We were attacked by those things and I was captured, and you know the rest."

  Konowa was certain that he didn't, not by a long cannon shot, but he decided to leave it alone for the moment.

  "By the way, what did you call me there a moment ago? I haven't heard that one before."

  Visyna pursed her lips. "Jarahta Mysor. It means bloodless shadow."

  Konowa shrugged.

  "A being without soul," she said, "an elf not of the natural world. You carry weapons forged in fire, were marked by Her, and serve the Empire that oppresses my people. You have forsaken your destiny and have turned your back on the ruarmana."

  Konowa gave her a questioning look.

  "Trees. They are the bridge between the sky and earth. Only trees reach both up to the heavens and down into the bones of the land." Visyna brushed another strand of hair from her face and stared at him with intense curiosity. "What is your native name for them?"

  "Lumber."

  Visyna's eyes flashed with anger. "You are more iron than elf!"

  He held up his hands for a truce. "Look, as scintillating as our conversation is, perhaps we could save it for another time?" The pain in his ribs was now a steady throbbing that threatened to pound him right into the ground. "Who knows what other beasties besides rakkes are out here, and I don't want to be around when they smell all this."

  Visyna looked as if she wanted to say a lot more, but held her tongue and began to pick up Konowa's belongings from the ground, careful to avoid any made of metal.

  Konowa watched for a moment, then put the remnants of his uniform back on, grabbed those items she wouldn't touch, and tramped straight into the forest without looking to see if she would follow. He knew Jir would come along when he was done eating.

  After several minutes he took a quick look over his shoulder and was surprised to see her only a couple of paces behind him. She moved with the assuredness of an elf of the Long Watch. Konowa wondered just what would make a woman so clearly enamored of nature serve the Empire, the largest single destructive force in the world. He chose not to dwell on his own reasons; he was in enough pain as it was.

  It didn't take long for Konowa to realize he was hopelessly lost. Chances of finding his hut tonight were as remote as the chances of his figuring out just where this day had gone so terribly, horribly wrong. Only this morning he had had the forest to himself, with just Jir and the damn bugs for company.

  Now he didn't know what to think about anything.

  The reappearance of extinct creatures, Her extinct creatures, speaking one's name, along with a royal decree also with one's name, had a way of changing one's outlook on life.

  Looking back to see that Visyna was still close behind, he pushed on through the trees, holding his ribs and cursing each step. He consoled himself that if this was the worst life could throw at him, things could only get better from here.

  Konowa chose to believe that lie for as long as he could. He succeeded for an entire day.

  SIX

  Now don't tell me you didn't see that," Private Yimt Arkhorn whispered, peering into the night from around the trunk of a bulbous wahatti tree. Fat, broad leaves like the ends of paddles hung down from the wahatti's branches, providing perfect cover.

  "I can't see my hand in front of my face," Private Alwyn Renwar said, feeling in the dirt for his spectacles, once again cursing his decision to join the Imperial Army. Deemed marginal for frontline duty, Renwar had been unceremoniously transferred to about the farthest-flung outpost one could draw—the Protectorate of Greater Elfkyna. As if that wasn't bad enough, when he got there he found he had been assigned to one of the rear-echelon guard battalions, with the noble task of watching over the wagon trains of the Outer Territories Trading Company. The food was terrible, the discipline ferocious, the duty alternating between long stretches of numbing boredom and short, sharp bits of sheer terror (like now), and women most certainly did not flock to his side.

  Alwyn despised the army, all three months of it so far. He was thousands of miles from home, sweaty, miserable, and scared, and partnered with of all people a dwarf who appeared to be a couple of batwings short of a potion.

  "I never should have taken the Queen's gold," Alwyn muttered, the enlistment coin long since spent, on what he couldn't remember.

  "Quit your nattering and look," Yimt ordered, spitting a stream of crute juice onto the ground. The rock spice made a sizzling sound as it bubbled on the dirt. "It's a shadowy thing, real big like."

  "I still can't find my specs."

  "You don't need specs to see it. It's a sight bigger than Her Majesty's twin jewels and the cushion she rests them on," Yimt said with a lecherous grin.

  "I shouldn't even be here," Alwyn said, patting the ground frantically. "Piquet duty for a month and for what? I didn't do anything. You're the one that ‘accidentally' bayoneted then cooked and ate the officer's goose. All I had was a drumstick."

  "Quit your griping, Ally," Yimt said. "Squad mates got to stick together. An' like I told that officer, that goose of his came at me with a right wicked look in its eye. I was defending myself, I was."

  "They'll write you up in a dispatch for bravery uncommon," Alwyn said, now scrambling around on all fours.

  "My mum would like that. Here," Yimt said, shaking his head in disgust, "it's for certain there ain't no elves in your family tree, with the pair of eyeballs you got." He reached out a thick-fingered hand and pushed a leaf to the side. "The thing is right there, seventy paces and no more. Have a swig o' this drake sweat and take another look."

  Alwyn put his hand down and felt his spectacles…covered in gritty crute juice. He quickly buffed the lenses against his coat sleeve before the crute ruined them and put them on, staring with some trepidation at the proffered canteen.

  The canteen was typical army issue, made of wood in the shape of a small drum, a large cork stopper at the top. What wasn't typical was that it appeared to be glowing.

  "Go on then, it'll clear up your sight right proper," Yimt encouraged, shaking the canteen in front of Alwyn's face. Drops of the liquid sloshed out and hissed when they hit the ground. The sound reminded Alwyn of a snake and a new, horrifying thought occurred to him.

  "You checked that we weren't over a viper nest, right?" Alwyn asked, his bowels clenching. He still woke up shaking sometimes, remembering the writhing mass of slick, black snakes that had come boiling out of a hole Yimt had assured him would serve perfectly well as a latrine.

  "It's a wild land; you never know what's around the next tree, or down the next hole," Yimt said, still holding out the canteen. "You heard the news crier this morning…all that talk by the new Viceroy about the Empire shining the light of civility among the heathen. That's like taking a lit match into a powder room, and guess who they'll be sending."

  Alwyn didn't know what to think. A rider in the employ of the Imperial Weekly Herald had come into their camp on the outskirts of Port Ghamjal just that morning, usually a cause for celebration because it meant news from home. This time had been different, however, the crier speaking in high, flowery language with veiled references to things Alwyn couldn't begin to understand, and none of it sounded good.

  "You think the new Viceroy is up to something?" Alwyn asked, still staring at the canteen. "After all the problems with that elf they had before, I figured this one would calm things down."

  "Ah, the naheeviteh of youth," Yimt said, shaking his head. "Things have been calm. There ain't a war going on anywhere, leastways not any big ones. Let m
e tell you, lad, I'll take peace and boredom any day."

  "But you don't think anything really bad is going to happen, do you?" Alwyn asked.

  Yimt's voice became grave. "Something bad always happens. The trick is being as far away from it as possible when it does. You stick with me and you'll be fine."

  It was the closest to logic he was likely to get. Alwyn made the sign of the moon and stars, took the canteen from Yimt, brought it to his lips, and took a sip.

  "Ack…ack," was all he could say for several seconds after the burning liquid roared down his throat.

  "Flower sniffer," Yimt said, taking the canteen back and pouring a healthy dose of the stuff down his own throat without even swallowing. "Have another look then."

  Alwyn felt as if the top of his head had been removed and molten lead poured straight into his stomach, but his vision did seem clearer. He inched his way around the other side of the tree and poked his head through the leaves. "What, that big thing by the fence?"

  "That's one of them water buffaloes. Mercy, how many times did they drop you as a baby? Look to your left, there, see the shadow?"

  Alwyn strained his eyes and thought maybe he did see something, but he couldn't tell what. Blast his eyes. He took off his spectacles and rubbed the lenses on his jacket some more then put them back on. "Right, I see it now. By the third post."

  "By the quack in a duck's bill, you found it. All right, on the count of five we'll shoot," Yimt said, pulling back the heavy iron lever on his shatterbow, a two-and-a-half-foot-long crossbow with two musket barrels side by side. Each barrel was easily twice the diameter of a regular musket and fired an iron dart the size of a grown man's thumb. As if that wasn't destructive enough, each dart was filled with gunpowder and a tiny fuse that was lit when the shatterbow fired, in essence making each projectile a small cannon shell.