He felt the warmth like a soothing balm, recalled how delicious it had felt against his skin at the campfire high in the Hest Mountains.
“I can heal you,” Az whispered in his memory.
The skies went dark as Az enticed fire from the heavens again. It swirled down into his hands, a brilliant maelstrom, a webwork of light piercing the darkness.
Unable to walk, Raj Ahten crawled toward it. His frame shook. Despite all his endowments of brawn, he trembled like an old woman, and gasped in the fetid air. He gained the lip of the pit, and looked up at the burning rune only three hundred yards away.
A wave of nausea rushed over him. He gasped as if he felt his own heart had been ripped away. Another vector gone.
There is an assassin at Bel Nai, he realized.
I will never live to reap my reward. I will not hear the songs I have earned.
He tottered up the lip of the pit, began stalking toward the great fire.
Az stood at the heart of the Rune of Night, drawing flames to himself, stealing the very light from heaven.
“Az!” Raj Ahten shouted with the last of his strength. His voice rang over the battlefield. He collapsed to his knees, struggled to even hold up a hand, pleading.
Az glanced down at him, saw his failing condition, and hurled the fireball.
It expanded as it roared near, until it filled Raj Ahten’s vision.
In one instant, the white silks on his back seared to ashes. The fire pierced him with a thousand burning fangs. The flesh of his face bubbled. Ears and eyelids roasted to nothingness.
Old parts of him, unneeded parts, the dross of his humanity, melted away.
An intense light burned into his mind, expanded his vision. In an instant he saw that he had been traveling toward this destination all his life. He had imagined that he fought to serve mankind by becoming the Sum of All Men, while others said that he only served himself.
But at every juncture in the path of his life, he had chosen to serve Fire.
Even as a young man, he had appropriated for himself the title Sun Lord.
Now his master seized him and, like precious ore, purified him in the flames. The dross melted away, and that which remained was hardly flesh at all—only a vessel that veiled an immaculate light.
Raj Ahten was no longer human. He was the power that he had served so faithfully, and now, all of the lesser flameweavers of this world would bow before him and call him by his secret name.
Burned, naked, transformed, and trailing glorious clouds of smoke, he climbed to his feet. The flames hissed his new name: Scathain.
57
Feldonshire
I crave peace. I would that all the villages in my realm would continually overflow with peace, like foam overflowing a mug of warm ale.
Guildmaster Wallachs led Averan, Binnesman, and the wylde out the back of the guildhall to a cobbled square bordered on one side by shops.
Here, draftsmen designed the works to be created while young wrights cut the timbers and master carvers did the detail work. Averan was surprised to see two blacksmith forges for the smiths that fashioned the carvers’ myriad tools.
In a finishing shop where pieces were stained and varnished, four burly men were loading wooden barrels into the back of a wagon. The team was already in its traces. The odors that arose from the wagon were noxious—the barrels were filled with spoiled linseed oil, denatured alcohol, poisonous lac, bags of salt crystals, and colored powders that she didn’t even recognize. All of them seemed to be ingredients for various types of varnishes and wood preservatives. The woodcutters were carting off virtually anything that they hoped might poison a reaver.
“Are the other wagons gone?” Wallachs asked.
“Aye,” one of his men muttered. He wiped an arm across his sweaty face.
“Leave the rest,” Wallachs told the laborers, indicating the poison. “Go save your families.”
The workers leapt from the wagon. Binnesman and Wallachs sat on the driver’s seat. Averan and the wylde climbed in.
As they left the stable, Averan could hear a distant roar, like the pounding of the sea. The reavers were coming.
She tried to judge her distance from the reavers by sound alone. Over the past two days, she’d become good at it. “They’re maybe three miles out, I think. They’ll be here in five minutes, maybe less.”
Her words seemed to have caught Wallachs by surprise. “So soon?”
“Maybe less,” Averan emphasized.
Wallachs glanced at Binnesman for verification. The wizard arched a brow. “Less than that, I’d say. The reavers are racing full tilt.”
Wallachs snapped his whip over the heads of his mounts, whistled and shouted. The horses erupted from the stable, went charging up the hill.
They’re slow, Averan realized. So slow.
These weren’t force horses. They were common animals, and big. Pulling logs and heavy loads over the years had strengthened them. But even with a light wagon racing at full speed, they’d be hard-pressed to outrun a reaver.
So Wallachs went stampeding south along the road, shouting, “Clear the way,” when anyone dared stand in front of him. “Five minutes. In five minutes the reavers will be here!”
Only then did Averan begin to see the danger. Heading east of town, where workmen’s cottages lined the dirt road, she still saw people everywhere. Many were emptying their houses, packing goods onto horses. One old woman quickly tried to pick an apple tree clean. Another young mother was grabbing laundry off a drying bush while her children tugged at her apron strings.
Dogs yapped at the wagon as it passed.
The road climbed a small hill, and for a couple of minutes Averan could see all of Feldonshire spread out below her. To the northwest the Darkwald was a brown blot along the silver waters of the Donnestgree. To the south lay a dozen hamlets in the folds of the hills. Boats plied the river, floating downstream on a glimmering road. Everywhere on the east of town, the highway was black and cluttered with travelers. Many of them were folks from Shrewsvale and villages to the west. They raced across the country on horse, on wagon, on foot.
Beyond them, three miles away, a cloud of dust rose in the hills where the reavers raged. From up here, the sound of their advance was louder, a continuous thunder.
People screamed across the miles.
“They’re all going to die,” Averan whispered. She climbed to the back of the wagon and stared out, feeling helpless.
She’d thought that she and Binnesman had done some good. They’d given the people all the warning that they could. But it wasn’t going to be enough.
“Not all of them,” Binnesman said. “We’ve saved some. Perhaps many.”
But as the buckboard topped the hill, she saw the reavers’ front ranks charging over a distant rise. Wagons and people fled before them.
A man’s legs would not carry him fast enough. Hiding would do no good. Men were less than mice before the reaver horde.
Gaborn’s troops fled in a long column, their armor flashing in the sun. They headed south into the hills, helpless before the onslaught.
Binnesman pulled Averan back. “Come away,” he warned. “Watching doesn’t do any good.”
But it does, Averan thought. Watching made her angry, and anger made her strong.
On a bald hill above Feldonshire, Gaborn tried to decide whether to make another stand. Hundreds of commoners had ridden up here on horseback. Most were young men who bore bows or spears. They were eager to prove themselves, hoped to earn the Choosing. Thus, Gaborn’s small army had begun to swell.
Still, he could do nothing for Feldonshire.
Below him lay his last hope: a stream cut through a narrow defile, and would provide some small distance between men and reavers. Farmers had built stone walls to keep their sheep from wandering into the ravine. Perhaps a hundred local men had taken position behind the eastern wall, and now stood with bows ready.
The reavers advanced on Feldonshire.