Firewalk Read online

  Firewalk

  Anne Logston

  Published by Mundania Press

  By Anne Logston

  Shadow

  Shadow Hunt

  Shadow Dance

  Dagger’s Edge

  Dagger’s Point

  Wild Blood

  Greendaughter

  Guardian’s Key

  Exile

  Firewalk

  Waterdance

  Firewalk

  Copyright © 1997, 2013 by Anne Logston

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Cover Art © 2013 by Niki Browning

  eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-59426-975-2

  Trade Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-59426-977-6

  First Mundania Edition • October 2013

  Published by:

  Mundania Press

  An Imprint of Celeritas Unlimited LLC

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  To Mary, Mark and Michael, who Aunted me

  Chapter One

  Kayo intoned the eighth-level meditation chant as the assistant carefully untied the sash of Kayli’s robe, slowly sliding the coarse fabric down over her shoulders. The first seven chants, progressively deepening her concentration, had taken all morning as she’d knelt on the stone floor of the forge while the younger novices had readied the fire—very quietly, so as not to disturb her. She’d prepared for this ritual for days—a sparse but carefully balanced diet, meticulous cleansing of her body, careful examinations by her teachers to be certain no cut or scratch, no cough or itch or aching muscle might distract her at the critical moment One day, after Kayli’s Initiation, a firewalk would be a simple matter, not requiring elaborate ritual and careful concentration. But in the meantime all her training culminated in this moment, the final test of her Dedication and her discipline, and despite the importance of this ritual, neither fear nor doubt troubled her mind. Her training had been exhaustive, her preparation thorough. The Order of Inner Flame rarely lost a novice in the first firewalk; danger usually came later, when ease and success made Initiates careless. Fatally careless.

  As she finished the eighth-level chant, Kayli slid her thari from its sheath on the stone before her. The most important step in her preparations for this moment had been the creation of the ceremonial dagger to be consecrated in her first firewalk. Kayli had forged dozens of blades before she’d completed one that suited her, folding and hammering the metal the prescribed ninety-nine times, quenching the hot steel in her collected tears, in her mouth, in her blood. She had carved the hilt from black horn inlaid with the symbols of the Flame and her Order in red-gold firestone. As yet the blade had no edge; when her thari was properly consecrated in her first firewalk, High Priestess Brisi would judge and bless it, and upon Kayli’s Initiation she would be allowed to sharpen it upon the temple’s blessed whetstone. The blade was perfectly forged and without flaw in its preparation—as was Kayli herself.

  She stood, and the novices glided back from the forge, kneeling well back from the firepit. Once Kayli began the ninth-level chant, they were utterly forbidden to move, lest some twitch or sound break her concentration.

  Kayli stepped to the edge of the forge, her thari held point up between her hands. The heat embraced her, rippling over her skin like water. The flames had mostly subsided, leaving only the hot coals, a few blue and orange tongues occasionally reaching upward. It seemed that they reached for her, hungry for her flesh.

  Kayli resolutely banished that thought. Her mentors believed her ready for this step; far more important, she believed she was ready. She’d proved it to herself a thousand times in simpler tests, holding the hot coals in her hands and mouth or laying them on her eyelids, holding her arms outstretched through the forge flames. This was her last test as a novice of the Order; if she succeeded, she would be judged ready for her Initiation, and Kayli knew to the depths of her heart that she would succeed.

  Kayli stared at the flames, knowing them her friend, and stepped forward—

  —only to be seized from behind by gentle hands and pulled back. Her concentration collapsed, and with it her training and control; she could not stifle a single sob of frustration—so much preparation, all destroyed! By the time she turned, however, she had calmed herself. Vayavara’s own face was expressionless as always—the Second Circle Priestess, Kayli thought to herself, had the most perfect control of her emotions that could ever be achieved—but there was sympathy in the priestess’s eyes.

  “Your father has come,” Vayavara told Kayli. “He would wait not a moment longer. I dared not risk that he might interrupt the ritual.”

  Now Kayli had mastered herself, suppressing the surge of irrational anger Vayavara’s words had provoked. She’d been at the Order for most of her life, and her father had never set foot in the temple, although her home lay only a few hours’ ride away. Of all times for High Lord Elaasar to visit the Order, why, why the day when she was to take her first fire-walk?

  She said none of this; she knew the cool Vayavara would have no sympathy for Kayli’s bout of self-pity. Respect and duty to, the family were as firm precepts in the Order as they were anywhere else in Bregondish society. If her father had come here, at this time or any other, he had good reason.

  Silently Kayli retrieved her robe and the sheath for her thari and followed Vayavara from the forge.

  The High Lord of Bregond seemed out of place in the comparative austerity of the Order’s simple waiting room. He rose as Kayli entered, but his smile was distracted.

  “Daughter,” he said, taking her hands. His voice was heavy with relief. “I’m relieved to see you’re well. They stalled me so long I’d begun to worry.”

  “I am well.” Kayli accepted a tray holding a pot of cai from one of the novices and poured two cups, offering one to her father. “I was preparing for my first firewalk. Priestess Vayavara was reluctant to disturb the ritual, but she said your business was urgent.”

  “Indeed it is.” Momentarily Elaasar looked
even more uncomfortable, if that was possible. “You must ready yourself to leave the Order immediately, daughter.”

  A ripple troubled the surface of the cai in her cup, but Kayli remained impassive otherwise.

  “Is there trouble at home?” she asked softly. “I heard nothing. Is Mother well? My sisters?”

  “They’re all well. Fidaya’s preparing for her wedding with great joy.” Elaasar cleared his throat. “As I hope you will.”

  Kayli was silent for a long moment. A thousand questions, a hundred thousand protests wrenched her mind momentarily into confusion. She was only the fifth-oldest daughter, and one of only two who had shown the gift of magic. Any important marriage of alliance would have been made with one of her older sisters yet unpromised. Lesser alliance marriages could surely wait for one of her younger sisters to come of marriageable age; in the meantime surely a betrothal would suffice.

  Kayli had been admitted as a novice to the Order of the Inner Flame in her fourth summer, when she’d been tested for the affinity to fire and shown great promise. She had trained at the Order for the past thirteen years, dividing her time between the discipline and ritual of the temple and the elaborate dance of etiquette at court as befitted the daughter of a High Lord. Only last year had Brisi, the High Priestess of the temple, agreed that the strength of Kayli’s gift and her mastery of what she had been taught warranted sacrificing her rank at court in favor of Dedication to the Order. Her mother and father had agreed immediately, with the same pride Kayli had felt when her sister Kairi had been Dedicated to the Order of the Deep Waters four years earlier and later Initiated. At Kayli’s Dedication, her father had formally relinquished her to the temple, releasing her from her obligations at court.

  All her years of preparation, the encouragement of her teachers, her ambitions within the Order—why could he possibly ask her to sacrifice what had become her whole life, and what possible marriage could require it?

  But in the end, family was family, and duty was duty, and the answers to those questions did not really matter. At last she set her cup down quietly.

  “Is there no alternative?” she asked evenly.

  “I have thought of none.” Elaasar sipped his cai, shrugging. “When you asked to enter the Order, your mother and I had no reason to deny you. We had eight daughters, after all, and two of your older sisters were already betrothed to bring us good alliances. Jaenira’s marriage to Lord Alkap has doubled our ikada wool trade. Fidaya’s marriage to Lord Dannar will open new trade routes to the west. But there remains the north. And the east.”

  Sarkond and Agrond. Once the Three Kingdoms had been one great country instead of three small, until eastern mercantile families had sent mercenary armies to drive the proud Bregondish plainsmen out of what was now Agrond to the east, until Sarkondish raiders had swept down from the northern steppes to carve their own territory out of the rocky hills to the north. In the generations since, Bregond had fought fiercely to hold the arid plains that were its only remaining territory. Agrond had made no further military push—it became too expensive to hire mercenaries to meet Bregondish troops when the stories spread that the invaders had lost three soldiers to each Bregondish warrior who fell—but Sarkondish raiders still swept down from the north, attacking not in force but in stealth, avoiding Bregondish patrols like ghosts, ravaging villages and departing as silently as they’d come.

  “High Lord Terendal has two sons,” Kayli said slowly. “But the eldest is wed already, is he not?”

  “Terralt is five years wed, with two sons and a daughter, and another child in the making,” Elaasar said, nodding. “But it’s Terendal’s younger son, Randon, who has been named Heir.”

  Kayli sipped quietly at the cai, saying nothing. Whatever she’d heard about Agrond’s politics had been long forgotten in the intensity of her studies. For the year since her Dedication, the outside world had ceased to exist for her.

  “It’s a complicated matter,” Elaasar said slowly. “Terralt is an acknowledged bastard, but Terendal always favored him and so have most of the lords of Agrond. He’s been the High Lord’s right hand for ten years now. Everyone expected him to be named Heir. Randon’s a rogue of sorts, charming enough, but found more often in taverns and brothels or in the saddle than in court. But a few months ago Terendal sent envoys to me, the first delegates to cross our borders in decades. He wanted peace and trade between Agrond and Bregond and offered military support against Sarkond—I’ve long believed that white our patrols watch the Sarkondish borders, the raiders pass through the northwestern portion of Agrond and attack from there—if I’d agree to a marriage between one of my daughters and Randon, whom he’d name as Heir. After long negotiations I agreed.”

  Kayli nodded. Her father would have been foolish to do otherwise. There was no greater alliance he could hope for, unless it was with Sarkond itself, and that would never be. Besides the much-needed military support, peace with Agrond would mean the opening of valued trade routes to the east, a great influx of new goods, plus access to the merchant caravans, which would in turn carry Bregond’s goods to new markets. Why, the great trade river itself, the Dezarin, ran through the southeast part of Agrond not far from Tarkesh, the capital.

  “While we were negotiating the terms of the marriage,” Elaasar continued, “Terendal fell ill. He continued to fail despite the attentions of his mage, who I’m told is a fair healer. He signed and sealed the final agreement on his very deathbed, his councilors witnessing while he proclaimed Randon Heir. Now Agrond’s in an uproar, factions splitting off. Randon’s got some support, mostly among the guilds—as I said, he’s a charmer—but Terralt’s got a far larger following among the nobility. He’s formally challenging Terendal’s choice of Heir.”

  “I rejoice at the good fortune of our country in securing such an alliance,” Kayli said quietly. “But still I do not understand—”

  “Why I chose you?” Elaasar sighed. “Your mother and I felt you alone were suitable for such a marriage. Jaenira’s wed and Fidaya promised. Laalen is frail and her lungs labor even in our good dry air. She’d sicken in the wetlands of Agrond, maybe die there. Danine, Melia, and Kirsa aren’t of child-bearing age yet, nor are they old and wise enough for such an important match.”

  “Surely Kairi is the best choice,” Kayli murmured, “being water-Dedicated and three years older than myself.”

  “Kairi,” Elaasar corrected, “would be wholly unsuitable, as you should know, daughter.”

  Kayli stared blankly for a moment until she realized what her father meant. Kairi was an Initiate; she’d already undergone the great and solemn ritual in which a chosen priest had Awakened her body and her gift. Doubtless there had been other lovers since that time, too; the currents of magic and desire ran closely together. More, Kairi would have been long taking the powerful temple potions which inhibited conception; she would not be able to bear the needed heir for some time, if ever. And with the throne of Agrond in dispute, there was little doubt that Randon’s bride must be virgin in order to present Randon with an heir of unquestionable legitimacy.

  Kayli closed her eyes. Legally, she had the right to refuse. Her father had formally relinquished her to the temple; he had no legal claim on her now. If she refused, the Order would stand publicly behind her decision. But by placing her own wishes above the welfare of her country, Kayli would betray the precepts at the very foundation of the Orders. Her father was right; there was no other choice. No use to protest. No use to bewail the death of her dreams.

  “I will prepare to leave immediately,” Kayli said quietly. “I have few belongings to gather. May I have a little time to take leave of my mentors?”

  Elaasar laid his hand over his daughter’s on the table, squeezing her fingers.

  “Take what time you need,” he said kindly. “I’ll ride ahead with half the guards and begin the preparations at home. As long as you leave by midday, you should arrive home safely by dark, but wait no longer than that, or delay your departure unti
l tomorrow. The decision to make peace with Agrond is not popular among all our people, and I’d see you safe within walls before dark. With luck, the escort from Agrond will arrive within a sevenday or so.”

  A sevenday. So little time to take leave of everything she had ever known. Or perhaps too much time—time enough for regrets.

  Kayli stood, bowing formally to her father.

  “I will be ready to leave by midday,” she agreed. That was a lie in one sense at least, and they both knew it, but what else was there to say? “I look forward to seeing my family again, if only briefly.” That, at least, was true.

  Elaasar gave her a short bow in return, respecting her need for temple formality at this moment. He left quickly, kindly giving Kayli the empty waiting room and the time to compose herself before she must face others. When Kayli opened the door, however, she found Vayavara waiting for her.

  “Novices are packing your belongings,” the priestess said impassively. “Come. The High Priestess wishes to speak with you immediately.”

  Kayli stifled a sigh. She was still barefoot, dressed only in her plain robe, her skin sticky with sweat and grimed with smoke from the forge, and ashes in her hair. It was hardly respectful to appear before the High Priestess in such a manner. But the High Priestess must know already what had transpired.

  Although High Priestess Brisi had personally taken Kayli’s teaching in hand since her Dedication, Kayli had entered her private chambers only twice: once when she was accepted into the temple, and once when the High Priestess had summoned her to announce that she had been selected for Dedication to the Order. Those had been the greatest moments of her life.

  Now she was returning to these rooms only to give up all she had gained.