The Fireblade Array: 4-Book Bundle Read online

  City of Blaze copyright H.O. Charles 2011

  Achellon is composed entirely of Blaze Energy and that it is the true source of such power. It is often described as a place devoid of pain or suffering.

  Blaze Energy – A fiery power that can be manipulated into weapons, shields, sources of light and even used to construct buildings. It is usually described as blue light in its most basic form, but to most people it is not visible.

  Blazes, The – The fires from which Blaze Energy is extracted. Only wielders (directly) and kanaala (indirectly) have access to these fires.

  Eisiel – A creature so burned by The Blazes that it is half-dead. Described as charred, oily

  skinned and wasted in appearance, eisiels kill without remorse. They usually hunt for a specific target, but whether they are instructed to do so, or develop their own fixation through madness, is not known. It is sometimes said that they are former lovers of wielders, whose fires burned them during love-making. They are immune to weapons made with Blaze Energy.

  Form (Blaze) – A structure made with Blaze Energy that will produce a specific weapon, shield, light or piece of matter. Forms are altered by defining the speed, vibration and shapes of Blaze Energy that make it. Once constructed, most forms can be deconstructed or unravelled, but the time required is dependent upon the complexity of the form.

  Kahr – A male heir of royal blood in the central and eastern areas of the Sennefhal continent.

  Kahriss – A female heir of royal blood in the central and eastern areas of the Sennefhal continent.

  Kanaala – A man who can manipulate (i.e. wield) Blaze forms or deconstruct them. Kanaala are the male counterpart to wielders, and they cannot access Blaze Energy independently. A kanaala can control the Blazes through a wielder, and he can access her fires before her power is fully matured. He also has the ability to permanently quench a wielder of her power.

  Kanaala are the only men who can safely sleep with wielders, though this is dependent upon their grading. For example, a kanaala graded four will almost certainly die if he lies with a wielder graded five and this is due to his limited capacity for her power.

  Kanaala are graded according to their ability, with most falling between grades three and five. A kanaala graded ten is considered to be very powerful indeed.

  A kanaala can detect the presence of a wielder. The more powerful either one is, the greater the distance at which they can sense one another. Kanaala can only detect other kanaala through skin-to-skin contact.

  Kanaala are born with their full potential already reached, and do not mature into their abilities as wielders do. Prospective parents fear giving birth to kanaala, since the child's arrival will almost always result in the mother's death. The same is not true of wielders unless the child has the potential to be especially powerful. It is thought that this difference has something to do with the child's latent Blaze abilities at birth.

  Blaze abilities are often inherited, but have been known to spontaneously appear in families where it has previously been absent.

  Kefruit – A hand-sized, yellow tree fruit with mottled peel. Its sweet flavour makes it popular in desserts.

  Nalka – The physical pain suffered by lovers upon being separated from each other. It usually manifests about ten days after their last engagement in sexual intercourse and is complete within four days of the first pains.

  The affliction is usually fatal to those who suffer it before the age of twenty, and so it is not advised that lovers enter into a sexual relationship before they're old enough to withstand the separation.

  It represents the termination of the bond between partners and their potential to procreate. However, lovers are able to have children subsequently, but only if they are able to maintain a sexual relationship without

  undergoing nalka for nine years.

  In spite of this phenomenon, brothels and whore houses are prevalent across much of the world.

  Partition (Blaze) – A Blaze form that masks wielding from any nearby kanaala or wielders. The construction of most Blaze forms gives off heat, and a partition will impede any further dispersal of that heat.

  Pinh – A black, poisonous liquid which prevents wounds from healing. If enough poison is ingested by an individual they will suffer pinhatar death, where the blood becomes too saturated with the substance to perform its proper function. Scars that result from wounds

  are generally caused by the presence of pinh.

  Sarkha – A tube-like implement with a plunger and reservoir at either end, used to clean pinhsaturated wounds that are too deep to be washed any other way. One reservoir is filled with water and the flexible, middle section of the tube is inserted into the wound. Once the water reservoir has been emptied into the injury, the second reservoir can be used to withdraw the diluted poison.

  Swift – An orange, ground-creeping flower, native to mountainous regions.

  Tanno – A juicy, purple berry with a slightly acidic taste. It is usually skinned, pressed and fermented to make wine.

  Vanha-sielu – An old term for an even older group of people, meaning "repeated life." These individuals are born again within two weeks of their deaths, ad infinitum. In each life they carry an identical appearance and are inevitably given the same name by their parents or guardians.

  Occasionally, their own fame in previous lives causes them to be named after themselves.

  Until the age of 23 they are unaware of their deep past, although several aspects of their character will manifest in the same way through childhood. If memories are forced upon a vanha-sielu before their mind is ready to accept them, it can lead to death or madness. However, familiar faces and objects do not

  seem to trigger this in young vanha-sielu, which implies that a certain set of words are necessary in order to initiate premature recall.

  It is currently unknown how the phenomena of vanha-sielu came about, and new ones do not appear to have been created in recent times.

  Wielder – A wielder is able to controlBlaze Energy and access The Blazes independently. Wielders are exclusively female, born with the potential to reach a certain level of ability, but they can only access their powers independently once they reach the age of twenty. Until then they must employ the aid of kanaala to help them wield.

  A wielder can detect the presence of another

  wielder. The more powerful either one is, the greater the distance at which they can sense one another. Wielders can only detect kanaala through skin-to-skin contact.

  Wielders are graded according to their ability, with most falling between grades two and four. A wielder graded ten is considered to be very powerful indeed.

  They are banished from Calidell and any discovered in the country, or found to be wielding, are immediately executed. Those born into unsuspecting Calidellian families are usually tracked down and exterminated.

  Wielders must choose their bed-fellows carefully, as they have the potential to burn their

  lovers alive. For this reason, most wielders will marry kanaala or remain celibate.

  Pain tore into his muscles, ripped through his veins and suffused his vision with its hard, white light. His lungs spasmed in their efforts to breathe. To his left were the legs of a table, and Morghiad reached out to steady himselfwith them, but his hand missed and thumped into the flagstones instead. Even those were moving far more than they should have done. He flicked his eyes to the man standing above him.

  A wry smile was creeping along Silar’s features. “I barely touched you. Now, do you want more, or did you have too much of Baydie’s wine-” His brow furrowed. “Morghiad?”

  The air was dense and heavy enough to press hard onto his shoulders, but Kahr
Morghiad forced his muscles to lift him from the ground until he was able to stand. The smell of sweat, viscous and rancid, filled his nose. He needed his sword.

  Morghiad stumbled toward where he

  thought it had fallen, and he found it cold and singing upon the stones. He took hold of it, and ran from Silar. He ran as fast and as hard as every sinew and ligament in his body would permit, and all conscious thought evaporated form his mind. There was only pain there, still ripping and tearing at him, but it was not his.

  Silar only blinked for a second, and then sprinted after Morghiad. If he hoped to catch up with the man, then every yard he seized now would be halfa yard less than he

  would have to catch later. Though both he and Morghiad were equally as tall and could see over the heads of other men, Morghiad was better at converting that height to a longer stride. In such situations there was no choice but to follow as keenly as one could.

  He catapulted himself out of the door of the practice room and yelled for the men to join him. At this pace there was no point in softening his feet, and the sound of his footfalls thundered between the rough-hewn blocks and into the blackness ahead. The castle had always seemed to him an elaborate yet damp cave. It was full of unyielding turns and mismatched lumps of rock. Here and there, braver rays of light dared to touch the basalt walls. The rest shied away, and tried their best at illuminating the surrounding town instead.

  Even that appeared unnecessarily dim at the surface. Often he wondered why he had ever chosen to stay in such a place.

  The sounds of Morghiad’s footfalls ahead of him were becoming more distant, and Silar was in danger of losing him amidst the maze. At his best guess, they were headed for the royal and guest quarters or the gardens below, but that was not a great deal of help. One could spend an entire day searching for a person in either of those areas. Silar had to push his legs to work harder.

  He could hear the men gasping and thumping their feet behind him; perhaps five or more had managed to keep pace. He shouted to Morghiad again, but no response came. How was he supposed to help when the man was so uncommunicative? What Silar could

  deduce, however, was that this had something to do with Artemi.

  Morghiad had a peculiar sort of compass in his head for that woman. It had been evident twice before, when the kahr had chosen the most unlikely of paths in looking for her. Together, he and Silar had stridden with unfounded purpose through the streets of the city, and had reached three dead ends where Morghiad appeared eager to walk through the obstructing houses.

  Then there had been the embarrassment upon reaching her, where they arrived at the wrong street level but were directly above her. Morghiad had given away nothing with his expression, as was typical for him, but Silar recalled the amusement in Artemi’s smile when they had finally seen her.

  She must have felt their mistake just as

  Morghiad had.

  Silar could still remember the way she had looked on that day, with hair the colour of old gold and fire that streamed over her shoulders and to her waist. And her eyes... Silar had always had a soft spot for those warm, dark eyes. The soft light had just about been strong enough to show that they were not black, but had easily picked out the cheekbones beneath, and the lips, and the infamous jaw of stubbornness that supported them. She was not an imposing woman, especially not in the green scarves of a benaygosa, but she was the queen.

  He could no longer hear Morghiad’s steps over his own. The corridor opened out into three hungry mouths. If he chose the wrong entrance, he could be slowed by whole minutes. Silar stopped and held his breath to listen.

  “Left fork, men!”

  He thrust himself into a hard run again. At the next junction he would most likely have to gamble on the direction Morghiad had chosen, and he had nothing better than chance to aid him. He called to the kahr a second time, but still it was only his echoing footfalls that answered back. Whatever this was, it had to be bad. Was Artemi hurt? Perhaps the king had finally discovered her secret, though it seemed unlikely. Silar had been fanatical about paying off and suppressing the voices of every one of the king’s spies that heard of it. It was really very fortunate that Silar’s mother had bequeathed him a spy network capable of

  spying on other spies. She had left him with that and other gifts, including her teachings.

  Even the wittiest of us are victims of our hearts, she had told him.

  Yet I am both foolish and a victim, he thought back at her.

  The grey walls of the tunnels gave way to simple pictures of characters in history, and most were war leaders, generals or hunters. Silar and Morghiad had once spent an afternoon – a very unsuccessful afternoon – trying to find Artemi among them. The paintings were exclusively male, which was probably by request of the king. He did not seem to like as women much as he ought to.

  Heavy oak doors punctuated the spaces between the portraits, and a bed maker peered nervously from one of them. Silar was

  on the right trail! The floors here were covered with wool rugs that sought to trip him as he ran, and soon the war portraits gave way to those of long-forgotten royalty. There was another junction ahead of him: soft carpets to the right and descending stone steps to the left.

  He shouted for Morghiad a third time and stopped to listen for any manner of reply. His patience was rewarded by the distant yelp of a woman and a crash of metal dishes.

  “That’ll have to do,” he muttered, and followed the sound toward its source.

  A league of darkened likenesses and scenic landscapes passed by him, and the faces became more recognisable as he pushed forward. The carpets gave way to marble, the hallway opened out nearly twenty feet in width and the ceiling ascended from a heavy arch to

  sprawling vaults. To one side, a wide-eyed servant hurried to tidy her dinnerware.

  These were the guest quarters, and were typically occupied by brown-nosing nobles and spoiled, royal children from across the borders. It was still a cave to Silar, just a larger one with richer vermin inside it.

  His earlier pause had given his men time to catch up. Three of them had made it through the catacomb of passageways. Silar signalled for them to hurry, still tearing down the hall with what remained of his breath. When he rounded a hundredth corner, he found Morghiad hurling his weight at one of the doors.

  The kahr did not acknowledge his presence; his expression was stone and his mind focussed elsewhere. His green eyes

  glittered with something... different as he threw himself at the door.

  Silar said nothing more, and synchronised his movements with his friend. Once, twice and three times they shouldered into the wooden panels. The frame began to crack and splinter at the hinges.

  One more.

  Boedrin, a short and improbably quick soldier, joined the battering ram for another push. The door gave out a wistful moan, and before it had completed its descent to the travertine floor, Morghiad had stepped onto the centre panel, leapt and came to land in the middle of the room beyond. In a smooth extension of the motion, he drew his sword into an arc and thrust it downward.

  Silar tumbled into the room behind him

  with the others. In a heartbeat he froze. He knew the outcome of the scene that progressed before him, and his role in this was done.

  Morghiad’s blade twisted through the air, and proceeded to cut through his opponent with deadly precision. The recipient of the strike made no sound as he fell, and his hands only released slowly from the neck of the woman he held. The ground had its claim upon her too, and Artemi eventually dropped from his grip with her hair swirling upward into the air about her.

  Silar’s legs no longer had any strength in them. He fought to take a breath, and his mind would only talk to him of the sights of which this was reminiscent. It was similar, it told him, to throwing a pitch log onto the fire and watching as the flames blossomed about

  This afternoon in Calidell’s capital, Cadra, was a fine one indeed. The city was a feast-day layer-cake of
houses and streets that had been carved from the local green

  limestone. In the very richest areas there were only two levels, and in the poorest there were six. The streets wove between these levels with bronze guardrails that marched along the sides and channels that drove rainwater down to the ground.

  Life on the lowest levels was a rather gloomy existence, as the only daylight seeped down from the foot-wide wells that bore their way to the surfaces above. Orange paraffin lamps shed their own feeble light here and there, and there surrounded them the noises of cart traffic, footfalls and chatter. The sounds never ceased, even at night-time, and they would reverberate along the roads and through the fabric of the stacked houses.

  War had moulded Cadra into its present form, and the defensive walls were

  beyond any ordinary man’s concept of vast. Their height seemed to caress the clouds, while their width took a full minute to traverse. A thousand years earlier, the city had outgrown its fortifications, and no one had the money or inclination to rebuild them or add extensions.