“What are we to do, then?” Delia asked. “We’re buried among her forces here, trapped in the very shadows cast by those flames we need to reach.”
Orquell slowly stretched to his feet with a creak of his bones. “Since we’re already here, we might as well be of use to Tashijan.”
“How so?” Laurelle asked. Her hand drifted to her throat. She knew she wasn’t going to like his answer. And she was right.
“We might as well call the witch to us.”
“What?” Kytt squeaked.
“We’ll draw her eye here. Away from the others.”
He stepped to one of his pyres, the one set before the door. Powders appeared in his fingers, as if out of the very air. He cast the alchemy into the fire. Flames flared brighter, chasing sparks high. He leaned down and whispered into the fire. But whatever he said was consumed by the flames.
Then he straightened and rested his fists on his hips.
“Now we’ll see if she answers.”
“When?” Delia asked.
“It may take a while.”
Delia stood up, eyes glancing over the four pyres. “Who are you truly?” Her eyes settled back to him. “You are rub-aki. That I understand. But you come here with your crimson eye painted over, and I suspect you’ve equally hidden your true purpose for arriving at Tashijan in so timely a manner.”
Orquell ran a hand over his bald pate. “I am a master,” he said. “These tattoos were hard-earned. But my crimson eye-that I earned through a decade of toil and flame, long before I was ever tattooed in my disciplines.”
He crossed to the bed and sat down upon it. He tapped a finger on the crimson thumbprint. “Do you know how this inner eye is ultimately opened?”
Delia folded her arms, still suspicious, but Laurelle shifted in her chair to hear better.
“The eye is opened in darkness.”
“But I thought the sacred flames of the rub-aki were the source of your enlightenment,” Delia said flatly. “A Grace gifted by the god Takaminara.”
“There is much speculation about the ways of the Blood-eyed-clouded further by those charlatans who fake a crimson eye. Very little of it is the truth. Takaminara prefers to keep her ways secret. The true rub-aki respect that and do not speak of such matters.”
“Then why tell us?” Delia asked. Her eyes kept shifting to the pyre before the door.
“Because what I must ask will require great trust.”
Delia merely shrugged, noncommittal. “Tell us about the opening of your inner eye.”
“Like I mentioned, it requires darkness. Takaminara is well versed in the relationship between flame and shadow. She has buried herself in her mountain, never stepping under the sun or stars. Yet she is more knowledgeable of this world than any other god. She stands amid the molten flows that run beneath all. Her world is neither flame nor darkness, but the space between. In that fracture, she can see into the deep past and the trails into the future.”
This last was said with great reverence.
“And for those who earn her mark, who serve her, she lets us share the smallest fraction of her sight. But to that we must open our eye. And here is a truth that only a handful of people know.” He stared at each in turn. “There is no Grace involved.”
Delia straightened, loosening her arms, then tightening them again. “Impossible. I’ve heard stories of the rub-aki, great feats of fire and prediction. True stories, not charlatan tales.”
Orquell nodded. “Yet it requires no Grace. Some communing and pryre casting require Grace and blessings from Takaminara. But at its most basic, down deep, every man and woman has this eye, awaiting to be woken.”
“How does one open it?” Laurelle asked “How does darkness open it?”
“It is not just any darkness. Once properly trained, an acolyte descends deep beneath the volcanic peak of Takaminara. Into caverns of black rock, long gone cold, where sunlight has never touched. A darkness so deep that it strains the eye and blinds it, like staring directly at the sun. That alone is a lesson worth noting. That purest darkness and the brightest flame blind equally.” He stopped and his gaze seemed to drift for a moment. Then he began again. “And in that darkness, with the regular eye blinded, the inner eye can open with proper initiation.”
Delia stirred. “But how does this make us trust you? Why did you come to Tashijan during such a dire moment as this?”
He shrugged. “No mystery there. Master Hesharian requested my services to seek a cure for the stone-cursed knight. That is the truth.” He turned to Delia. “But it was Takaminara that sent me to Ghazal, to study the ways of the Clerics of Naeth. It was those same studies that drew the attention of Hesharian. And eventually drew me here.”
“So Takaminara knew you’d end up here? Why? Did she foresee what has befallen us?”
Orquell shrugged. “I do not know. We are her servants, submitting to her will as much as any Hand of a god. We go where the flame directs. Perhaps she saw it, but more likely she cast us out like petals on a flowing river. She can sense the current, but even she can’t tell where each petal will land. Portending is much different than the charlatans make it seem. More powerful in some ways, less in others.”
He must have read the disappointment in Laurelle and the doubt in Delia. Kytt just gaped at the revelations.
“Takaminara once described what portending was truly like. It was like seeing flames in the dark. Fiery pools of illumination, disconnected to everything around it. To place too much significance on what is revealed, without knowing what remains hidden in the dark, is a fool’s paradise. You’d might as well see nothing at all.”
“So then what do you see with your open eye?” Laurelle asked.
Before he could answer, the pyre by the door suddenly burst up with a flare of flame.
Orquell stood. “It seems someone’s come knocking.”
Kathryn faced the pair of wraiths in the room.
A dozen bodies of young boys were strewn among the stacked beds and floor like scattered dolls, broken and ripped. The far window, high on the wall, no more than a slit, seemed too small for any wraith to enter. The iron shutter was peeled back and teetered on a broken hinge, weakened by rust. Such was the sorry state of Tashijan: fallen into disrepair over the centuries as numbers dwindled and the space grew too large.
It shouldn’t have happened. For lack of a solid hinge, twelve boys had died.
One of the wraiths straddled a lad, his chest raked, throat torn. A fistful of claw was buried in his belly. It tore free, yanking out the most tender parts. The wraith’s face was covered in blood and gore as it spit at her, hissing and baring its teeth, protecting its meal.
The other was perched on the top of the stacked beds, also straddling something, but it was not slaking its hunger. It was satisfying another lust. It leaped up to the bed railing, claws digging into the wood. Its manhood swollen and bloody. Wings spread.
Kathryn held her sword up and gathered the room’s shadows to her cloak. She remembered Lord Ulf’s cold words, how he controlled his wind wraiths through seersong and will. Her lips hardened. Was this the manner in which he controlled them?
Behind her, fighting continued out on the stair. Screams, wails, and frantic orders echoed up and down the main spiral. Slowly they were losing levels, one after the other. Blood was spent in order to clear floors. Stormwatch was slowly being driven into ever smaller quarters.
The only advantage: The knights had less territory to guard, and the wraiths had fewer ways to strike them.
As a result, a balance was establishing. They had held this level for an entire half bell. The line was even firming. A glimmer of hope had started to sound in the growl and shout of the knights and masters.
It was such a feat that also allowed Kathryn to hear a scream behind this door. A squire’s lodging. She had opened the door to find this horror. How many other places in Tashijan suffered similarly?
The one atop the bed attacked first, screeching and diving at her, its wings wide. Kathryn shifted shadows in
