Firesky, p.1
Firesky, page 1
FIRESKY
Mark De Jager
First published 2022 by Solaris
an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,
Riverside House, Osney Mead,
Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK
www.solarisbooks.com
ISBN: 978 1 78618 337 8
Copyright © Mark de Jager 2021
The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
eBook production by Oxford eBooks Ltd.
www.oxford-ebooks.com
For the dreamers.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Prologue
The Private Annals of Tiberius Talgoth, Archmage
My father died yesterday. He was a great scholar, and a warrior too. He had walked and fought beside the Battle Kings, wielding his power as they did their star-forged swords, felling creatures that would one day become legend and myth. It was his hand that wrote the first Codex of Power, and his teachings that set me upon the Path.
He was the greatest man I had known, and most likely will ever know, and yesterday I watched him die in his own filth, the hands that had once bent reality to his will crooked and twisted.
When the sun had set, I lit his pyre with the magic he had given me and watched his flesh turn to ash and ember. His vassals wept and the bards sang mournfully as the fire threw sparks high into the night, while the priests intoned their great rituals, assuring me with soft hands and voices that his soul had found its way to the gods.
They no doubt mistook my silence for mourning, but then they had sat with me and watched as time stole both his mind and the life from him. In his final moments of lucidity he begged for release, and I granted him it. And now my father was no more for Death had rendered every part of him meaningless.
Death.
It rules our lives, reaching into them with impunity. Even now I feel the subtle fingers of its murderous handmaiden, time, closing around my heart. When will they tighten and send all my dreams and achievements into the fire of oblivion?
Chapter 1
A fierce storm was lashing the besieged city of Falkenburg as I made my way through the palace at the heart of it, and even now its bitter rain would be blowing in through the shattered windows of the church and lashing the bodies of Cardinal Polsson and his bodyguards. The Cardinal, a servant of the Worm Lord, had died in my fire, never knowing that his cruel tortures had helped me remember who and what I was. I had left his smouldering corpse where it fell and raced across the city to rescue Tatyana from the paladins that he had corrupted with his foul magic, and had finally shared my secret with her.
Tatyana stopped fiddling with the buckles of the armour she’d just stripped from the guard I’d killed on my way to rescue her and gawped at me.
‘So you’re telling me that you’re a dragon?’
‘Yes.’ I stood as straight and tall as my currently human shaped body would allow me to.
‘An actual, fire-breathing dragon?’
‘It’s more like spittle, but yes,’ I said.
I was starting to think I had perhaps been too hasty in telling her the truth, but if I hadn’t, I think I might have taken to standing on the roof and bellowing it at the city. Some secrets begged to be told, at least once. Since I had shared my secret, she’d done little save stand in one place, trying to fasten the same buckle while looking like she was expecting to wake up at any moment.
She shook her head again. ‘No, no. It’s not possible.’
I plucked the buckle from her grasp and threaded the strap through as I had seen her do with the others. ‘I assure you that it is.’
She touched the bare skin of my arm, her hand as pale as bone against my ebon hide. ‘You can’t be him. The Dead Wind was just a legend, a song. A story that even my family had forgotten.’
I felt a prickly shiver of something run down my backbone as she said that long forgotten part of my name out loud. I was Stratus Firesky, the Dead Wind. The Destroyer. My memories had been fractured for too long, and reclaiming my name had woken a forgotten part of me. I felt the old fire kindle in my eyes and she gasped at the sight of it, dragging my attention back to the present.
I closed my eyes until I felt the tingle fade, then took a steadying breath. ‘My answer is not going to change if you insist on asking the same question. Now, I must find Fronsac. That wizard knows—’
‘Stratus, wait.’ She grasped my arm as I turned away.
I paused, my teeth clenched to hold back a sharp retort. She didn’t flinch from my gaze this time, but instead rubbed her hands together as if cold and shifted from foot to foot.
‘Please. Is that… was that true? What you showed me?’
I could hear her heart racing without even trying, and even as I thought about it I tasted the sour edge of fear in her scent. Perhaps I had been wrong to offer her that glimpse of my old self, my true self, but as with most humans, if she didn’t see something she wouldn’t believe it. And sometimes not even then, it seemed.
‘I would not lie to you,’ I said. I lied. ‘I am the Dead Wind.’
‘But—’ She gestured at me vaguely.
I bridled at the delay. Fronsac’s scent wasn’t getting any fresher, and the sooner I concluded my business with him the sooner I could be free of the city, and free away from roofs and walls and the rule of men.
‘Enough of this. You are not making any sense.’ She actually flinched as I stepped towards her, which I found hurtful given that I had just saved her life, and not for the first time. ‘Why is the truth harder to believe than that I am some infernal creation?’
‘I never believed that,’ she said.
I heard her heartbeat skip at that, a murmur that I may not have sensed had I not known the sound and feel of it so well.
‘You ask me not to lie, but then you do just that. That is not what friends do to each other, Tatyana Henkman.’ I didn’t put any power into saying her name, but I could feel the sorcery I had inadvertently embedded within her react to it nonetheless.
She opened her mouth to say something, but closed it and simply hugged her arms to her chest. The temptation to look into her mind was strong, but I resisted and simply folded my arms.
‘Tell me, what more would you have me say or do that would convince you?’
She didn’t say anything at first and simply stared at me as if seeing me for the first time.
‘Your wings,’ she blurted as I turned away. ‘Where are your wings? And your tail?’ She took a deep breath. ‘I can understand demons, there are lots of stories about them. But a dragon? It’s just not possible. I mean, how? I know it’s magic and all that, but you’re too small.’
A trio of servants who had stopped to stare at us quickly moved away as I looked in their direction, their excited whispers following them.
‘My wings are inside me.’ I held up a hand as she opened her mouth again. ‘The enchantment that binds me to this shape very nearly killed me when I set it upon myself. I will not waste your time, nor mine, trying to explain it, other than to say that my flesh remembers them, like a seed carries the memory of the mighty oak it will one day become.’
‘But why are you still a man?’ She gestured to me as if I wasn’t painfully aware of the body I was wearing.
I grimaced for that was a question I couldn’t yet answer. ‘It is not by choice. It is...’
‘Yes,’ I said, with no little relief. ‘But now is not the time to try and explain it.’
Her brows creased in thought at this, and I took the moment to start walking again. I heard her start following again after a small pause. We walked in relative silence for some time, in so much that I could hear her muttering to herself but thankfully her questions seemed spent for now.
The traces of Fronsac’s magic were easier to follow than his scent, letting me spend more thought in mentally rehearsing how I would announce myself to him until Tatyana spoke again, breaking into my thoughts.
‘So how’re you going to handle this? I mean, will Fronsac know?’
‘Know what?’
She hurried forward until she was abreast with me. ‘That you’re a bloody dragon.’
‘No. Why would he?’
‘Well, he’s the best wizard we have, isn’t he?’ She waved her hands at me. ‘You’re the one with the magic singing rainbows. How do you tell if someone’s a wizard?’
I couldn’t help but smile at her description of the Songlines. I’d taken great care to explain how the currents of magic cradled the world but her attention span had clearly not been up to the task.
‘I can usually smell it on them, like a burned spice, or sense the gathering of their power.’ I slowed to save her from the undignified shuffle she was having to do to keep up with me. ‘To divine who and what I truly am he would need to do far more than he has so far. I do not doubt that he senses that there is something inhuman about me, but for now I expect he believes it to be a distortion from my sorcery.’
‘So are you going to tell him?’
The thought of a wizard, even a relatively friendly one like Fronsac knowing what I was sent an unpleasant shiver through me. The tortures that Navar Louw, my captor and the last wizard I had known, had visited upon me were not easily forgotten. His name was a curse to me now, and I felt my hands curling into fists at the mere thought of him. I had sworn to kill him, and thinking of the epically brutal ways in which I would do just that had become one of my favourite ways to fill the sadly rare moments I had to myself.
‘Stratus?’
‘What?’ Startled back to awareness, I barked the word at her. ‘Apologies. I do not have pleasant memories of wizards.’
The trail I had been following now led us along a passageway that ended in a small chamber with a wonderful pair of doors made almost entirely of coloured glass panels that together formed an attractive but somewhat bizarre picture of a man with a burning head sat upon a horse. I could see the shadows of at least half a dozen armed men milling around beyond the doors, and while they didn’t seem particularly agitated, I knew it wouldn’t take much to turn their primitive minds towards violence.
‘Hold on, Stratus.’ She pulled at my arm as I moved to open the doors. ‘Slow down. Why have you brought us here?’
I glanced at the room and at the silhouettes of the men and shrugged. It all looked the same to me. ‘Fronsac is somewhere close, just beyond those doors. I can smell him.’
‘That passage leads up to Jean’s private chambers. Those are his personal guards. They’ll not let anyone past them without an invitation from him.’
‘Not even you, the sworn sword of Prince Lucien?’
She snorted at that but didn’t say anything. She was frowning, which was a good sign because it meant she was thinking about something. I had no issue with forcing my way into his chambers if I needed to, but it would undoubtedly be easier if I didn’t need to burn my way into the Crown Prince’s chambers. He was decidedly pricklier about such things than his brother Lucien.
‘I’m going to try something,’ she said, tugging at her borrowed armour. ‘Don’t do anything. Just follow what I do.’
‘That would be doing something.’
‘Gods, not now, Stratus.’
With that, she pulled the glass doors open and stepped through into the passage. She’d taken barely taken a step before her way was blocked.
‘Hold please, milady,’ said one of the men. ‘Is Prince Jean expecting you?’
I stepped out into the passage and even though I was being peaceful, the guards reacted as if stung, recoiling away from me and laying their hands on their swords.
‘Calm down, gentlemen,’ Tatyana said with a smile, and for a few heartbeats it looked like it was going to work. What neither of us had considered was that somewhere in the maze of the palace behind us, the paladins who I had trapped in their dormitory while on my way to rescue Tatyana had eventually hacked their way through the door, and were now ringing every bell and sounding every horn they could lay their hands on.
The guards froze as the sonorous honk of the horns reached us. The one who’d spoken to Tatyana reacted first, stepping back from her and raising his hand.
‘I’m afraid you need to leave. No one comes in or out until I know what is going on,’ said the guard who had previously addressed her.
I leaned in close to Tatyana and covered her eyes with my hand. She gave a jolt at my touch, but I held her immobile against me and turned to the guard who had spoken.
‘My apologies,’ I said. ‘It’s neither personal nor permanent.’
He stared at me, his hand on his sword, and even I recognised the expression on his face as confusion. I closed my eyes and released the light spell I’d been holding. I hadn’t added any heat to it, and so fully expected their sight to return, but there was no point in taking chances with my own vision. The pulse of magic light manifested above my head, and blazed like a small, silent sun for a brief moment before blinking away into nothingness. I released Tatyana and she pushed herself away from me.
‘What did you do!’ Her voice trailed away as the guards began shouting and clutching at their faces. ‘God’s beard, I told you not to do anything!’
‘Your approach was being as useful as a goat’s ear.’
‘What?’
‘It’s an old expression. Come along,’ I said, pushing my way through the reeling guards.
One of them clutched at my leg but I shook him off easily enough. Fronsac’s scent strengthened once we were past the guards. Happily, he was quite close, and I gave Tatyana an encouraging smile as I knocked on the doors. The wizard opened them almost immediately, giving her no chance to protest.
‘I thought I felt your sorcery,’ he said. ‘Stars, what is going on here?’
‘Nothing serious,’ I said. ‘I found Tatyana.’
He watched the men in the passage for a few moments, then stepped aside. ‘So you did. Come in, quickly now.’
Jean’s chambers were far more spacious than Lucien’s had been, and not only because of the lack of cluttered tables. The main room was set with a number of chairs, each of which looked comfortable enough to sleep in, all arranged around a single long table set with bowls of fruit and bread and several bottles of wine. The starchy smell of men was predominant, but there were also far more pleasant undertones of sweet resins and flowers, which made it tolerable.
Jean was sat in the largest of the chairs, watching us with a goblet held in his ink-stained fingers and a great number of papers upon his lap. A pale, muscular man I did not recognise stood behind him, his hands resting on the bone handles of the two swords that hung from his belt.
‘Highness,’ Tatyana said from behind me. Her finger dug into my back and I inclined my head in a shallow bow, if only to stop her from an angry outburst.
‘Meneer Stratus,’ the prince said, setting his goblet down and nodding to Tatyana. ‘The mage was just talking about you.’ He cocked his head towards the doors and the muffled sound of the bells. ‘I would guess that a lot of people are talking about you at this moment, and I suspect not in such friendly tones.’
‘My prince, may I just—’ Fronsac began, but Jean raised his hand and the wizard fell silent.
‘No,’ Jean said. ‘I want him to tell me. To show me, as he did you.’
‘My prince, in the mildest of terms, that is most irregular.’
‘He has given you his word, has he not?’
I smiled as Fronsac glanced across at me. Prince Jean was proving to be far more interesting than my first impression of him had ever suggested. I had indeed given Fronsac my word that I would stand with them to destroy Navar Louw, the so called Worm Lord and my previous owner. It was a dangerous thing to offer a skilled wizard, but killing Navar was very much my first priority.
