The Book of the Burning

Phineas looked up into the darkness, but even as he did, he pulled his hand back and shouted.

For a moment, the blade went fluid. It was a serpent, leaping, now disappearing in flames, hot sparks falling on Rendan’s face.

I’m not in the ground

I’m not in the sea.

 

Above, in the darkness a voice echoed eerily.

 

“I’m not of the fire

though fire you see

 look now and tell

if you know me

 

Rendan heard shouting and then turned, forgetting his restraints. He could only turn his head and where the men had stood, binding Ethan, now the prince was free and they were ringing their hands.

Phineas shouted.

“Ohean!”

“Yes,” the voice was peaceful. Almost amused.

Phineas stretched out his long hand, and began making a sign, but the voice said, “No, no. I wouldn’t do that.”

Now Rendan saw that same princely man who had delivered the message to him and Ethan coming down the long stair at the end of the hall. Many of the Hands rushed toward him, but smiling, Ohean threw up his hand and a wall of fire roared up at the bottom of the stairs.

“Come back,” Phineas said in irritation.

The men obeyed and the princely man continued down the steps and through the flames, unperturbed.

“You have brought the Hero with you,” Phineas said.

“The Hero,” Anson said, “prefers to be called Anson.”

Anson pulled out Callasyl, and as he made a cutting motion, Rendan felt his hands free.

“Nice,” Ohean looked at him in admiration.

Anson smiled out of the corner of his mouth.

“But you,” Ohean turned back to Phineas, “you’ve changed your name completely. Not completely, only the last three letters, but those letters were important ones, Phinlyn.”

“Speak that name again,” Phineas’s voice sounded sharp, “and there will be words between us.”

Rendan, feeling his bonds gone, dared to roll away. Phineas was not paying attention to him anymore.

“Yes, forgetting that name is best. That’s a corpse that won’t be resurrected. Say, I am here to take the princes back. Let them come with me.”

Phineas shrugged.

“Go,” he said to Rendan.

Ethan was already near Ohean, and Rendan was approaching him. He was a compact man a little shorter than himself, dark like the southerners with an unreadable face and Phineas said, “All the time you’re wasting here, all the time you’re talking to me, Ohean, showing off as ever was your wont… I have been weaving a new spell. Did you think to rescue the princes before you went to take the Stone? Did you think when you returned to Chyr they would hail you as Ohean the Great again, and you would regale them with tales of how you had taken the Stone and saved a prince? Did you think—”

And just then there was a sharp crack and then the floor began to shake.

By the look on Phineas’s face, Rendan and Ethan could tell he had not expected this.

The ground underneath them was shaking, and shortly after, there was a great snap, an explosion from above, and a cloud of dust fell over the altar.

And Ohean said, his voice lower, “No. I did not think that at all.

“I thought to trust others to do that job while I would protect them, and—”

A great rip went through the floor of the temple, and there was screaming, shouting, an eruption. One of the incense tripods fell over and fire flared up.

“They have succeeded. This…” Ohean said, “and this is the wrath of Mozhudak. He is awake. His Stone is gone. It has been taken. He is angry. I suggest you go, Phineas.”

Phineas’s face was impossibly white and his mouth was open.

It was Anson who repeated: “I suggest you go, Phineas. I suggest you run. Right now—”

And then Anson cast Callasyl at the wall and it blew a hole in it. The sword leapt back into Anson’s hand and, deftly, he put it away. All around them the floor was rippling like water and Hands and priest falling through it. As the ground beneath them gave way with a groan, Ohean and Anson pulled the two princes through the wound Callasyl had made in the wall and were gone.

The dull threat of the Durgenhorn had given way to a new, louder, clearer sounding before Orem could speak. For some moments they all looked up, and then Yarrow motioned for him to continue.

“Well, now see I didn’t know,” Orem explained in the red lit stone parlor where they all were, stretched out, dirty, tired, Orem a little bit bloody.

“Yarrow, whom I reckon we should now call Cylthenfay, brought the books with her the first time she came to save us by taking us into the Passes. One of them made a reference to the Wrath of Mozhudak. I forgot it but read it again. And then, of course,” he said, looking at Theone, “I just remembered the way we lived. The way I lived. There was always a price to be paid. So I knew I had to find you. I knew something was going to happen. Did I know the whole place would collapse? No. But I knew I had to do something.”

There were still tremors and rumbles, and the new horn was still sounding. Skabelund looked back every once in a while, biting his lip.

Yarrow placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Do you think the two of us would not have ringed this place about with spells? Do you not feel Conn’s young magic? And Ohean, surely was doing something to protect you or else, how would Orem have found the deepest pass and been able to bring you out through it.”

“You helped,” Orem said.

Yarrow looked at him with a fey smile and said, “I know.”

Just then, through a wide opening, after the great sound of creaking and rumbling, came four, dusty and rumpled figures. Conn recognized the one in the middle and ran to him shouting, “Ohean!”

He caught him by the shoulders.

But Theone, who was pleased enough, put her hand to her mouth looking at another one of those just come through the wall, and said, “It can’t be true. It cannot be so.”

“Theone,” Ethan greeted her. He wanted to say more, but instead sat down half collapsed, and Mehta, ever the capable servant, got up to find him water.

And then Ethan looked surprised.

“Yarrow?”

“What?” Theone murmured.

“Ethan,” Yarrow bowed, closing her hands together.

“Yarrow was the lady who raised Maud,” Ethan told Theone.

“Maud Maud? Your Maud?”

“The same.”

“What a small world it has turned out to be,” Yarrow said as Ohean spoke.

“This is Prince Ethan of Vand, recently in the hands of Phineas and this, is Prince Rendan, heir to the Solahni Throne.”

Rendan made a bow, but he was so weary he fell across Theone and she helped him to a chair.

“My father will reward you all greatly,” he said.

Conn was more holding up than holding onto Ohean, and the Stone twinkled in his hands, between his fingers. He had been overjoyed but now he looked up at the concern in Ohean’s face.

“My prince,” Ohean said. “I did not know what would happen when the Jewel was taken, but when the place began to fall, well, I knew that my friends were well. I knew that. And by that same art I know there was treachery in your house.”

Rendan looked at Ohean.

“In Chyr, the Queen Ermengild is dying, and the only heir, or so they believe, is one girl, Tealora.

“That is my uncle’s new wife.”

“Yes,” Ohean said. “I had other matters further north. I did not know Phineas was behind this marriage, though I should have suspected. When I saw you bound in the Temple, I knew even more. Your uncle, Prince Bellamy, plans to do what the Solahni kings have not done in a thousand years: rule over Chyr and Daumany, all of these lands, with the Stone in his crown and Phineas at his side. He will not have the Stone, not now. But he has already made compact with Phineas. That was why the sorcerer brought your father to the city. That is how he got into the palace. I am afraid Bellamy belives himself King of Solahn. That… is the sound of the new horn you have been hearing. Proclaiming your uncle Bellamy King.”

“He has stolen two lands,” Dahlan murmured, “in one day.”

They were all silent for a long while, and all that could be heard was the distant crumbling of the Temple grounds, and the horn from the Takarand Palace proclaiming Bellamy King.

Then Rendan said:

“So my father is dead.”

Ohean turned his head.

“What….” Rendan began, “does this mean?”

It was Ethan who spoke now.

He said: “It means you are King.”

END OF CHAPTER