Soul of the Fire

Chapter 54

“What are we going to do?” Morley whispered.

Fitch scratched his ear. “Hush, I’m planning it out.”

Fitch had no idea what to do, but he didn’t want Morley to know that. Morley was impressed that Fitch had found the place. He had come to depend on Fitch knowing what to do.

Not that there was that much to know. Mostly they rode hard. They had all that money Dalton Campbell had given them, so they didn’t have to know much. They could buy food; they didn’t have to hunt it, or gather it. They could buy any gear they needed; they didn’t have to fashion it themselves.

Fitch had learned that money went a long way toward making up for what a person didn’t know. Having grown up on the streets of Fairfield, he did know how to guard his money, and how to keep from being cheated, robbed, or tricked out of it. He was careful with the money, never using it to buy flashy clothes or anything that would make it look like they were worth knocking over the head, or worse.

The one surprise was that no one much cared that they were Hakens, or even seemed to know. They were treated decent by most folks, who thought them polite young men.

Fitch didn’t let Motley talk him into buying drinks at inns; he knew that would be a sure way to let unsavory people know they had money, and being drunk only made it easier to forget to be careful. Instead they bought a bottle, and only when they’d set up a camp for the night, somewhere people weren’t likely to come across them, did he and Morley get drunk. They did that a lot at first. It helped Fitch forget that people thought he had raped Beata.

Morley had wanted to spend some money on whores at one town they went through, but Fitch didn’t want to. He finally gave in and let Morley do it, being as the money was his, too. Fitch had waited with their horses and other things outside town. He knew what sometimes happened to travelers coming into Fairfield to visit prostitutes.

Afterward, a grinning Morley said he’d watch over their things while Fitch went back and had his turn at visiting a woman. Fitch had been tempted, but the idea made him all jittery. Just when he thought he’d worked up the nerve, he’d imagine the woman laughing at him, and then his knees would get to shaking and his palms to sweating something fierce. He just knew she’d laugh.

Morley, he was big and strong, and manly. Women wouldn’t laugh at Morley. Beata used to always laugh at Fitch. He didn’t want to have some woman he didn’t even know start laughing at his skinny frame as soon as he got his clothes off.

He finally decided he didn’t want to risk his purpose, or waste any of their money on it. He didn’t know how much it would cost to get to where they were going and feared running out too soon. Morley called him a fool, and said it was more than worth it. It was all he talked about for the week after. Fitch had gotten to wishing he’d done it just to shut Morley up.

As it turned out, he needn’t have worried about money. They hadn’t spent much at all—not compared with what they had. The money had helped make it a swift journey. With money, they could trade for fresh horses and keep going without having to care for the animals by slowing their pace.

Morley shook his head. “All this way, and here we are stuck this close.”

“I said hush. You want to get us caught?”

Morley fell silent, except for scratching his stubble. Fitch wished he had more than a few hairs on his chin. Morley had a beard coming in. Fitch sometimes felt like a kid next to Morley, with his broad shoulders and stubble all over his face.

Fitch watched as the distant guards patrolled back and forth. There was no way in except the bridge. Franca had told him that much, and now that he was here he could see it plain for himself. They had to get across that bridge, or it was over.

Fitch felt a strange whispering wind caress the back of his neck. He shivered after it moved on.

“What do you suppose he’s doing?” Morley whispered.

Fitch squinted, trying to see better into the distance. It looked like one of the guards was climbing up onto the stone side of the bridge.

Fitch’s jaw dropped. “Dear spirits! Did you see that!”

Morley gasped. “What did he do that for?”

Even at the distance, Fitch could hear the men yelling, running to the edge, looking over.

“I can’t believe it,” Morley breathed. “Why would he jump?”

Fitch shook his head. He was about to speak when he saw a man on the other side of the bridge climb up on the stone edge.

Fitch thrust out his arm. “Look! There goes another one!”

The man reached out with his arms, embracing the air, as he leaped off the bridge, out into the chasm.

Then, as the soldiers ran to that side, a third leaped to his death. It was crazy. Fitch lay there on his belly, dumbfounded.

In the distance, the sounds of men screaming as yet more jumped off the bridge were like chimes ringing. They drew weapons, only to drop them and climb up on the stone walls themselves.

Something felt like it pushed at Fitch’s back, like his own imagination urging him to take his chance while he had it. The sensation tickled at the back of his neck. He scrambled to his feet.

“Come on, Morley. Let’s go.”

Morley followed as Fitch ran back down to the horses, hidden in the trees. Fitch stuffed his foot in the stirrup and sprang up into the saddle. Morley was right behind him as Fitch gave his horse his heels, urging her into a gallop up the road.

It was a climb, up the switchbacks, and he couldn’t see through the trees if the soldiers were getting themselves collected. He didn’t know if they would be in such a state of shock and confusion that the two of them could get through. Fitch didn’t see that they had any other chance but this one. He didn’t know what was happening, but it wasn’t likely that guards jumped off the bridge every day. It was now or never.

As they came around the last bend, they were racing like the wind. He thought that with the havoc, he and Morley could charge past the last of the guards and get over the bridge.

The bridge was empty. There were no soldiers anywhere. Fitch let their horses slow to a walk. It ran chills up his spine remembering all the men he had seen only moments before. Now only the wind guarded the bridge.

“Fitch, are you sure you want to go up there?”

His friend’s voice had a tremble to it. Fitch followed Morley’s gaze then, and saw it, too. It stuck out of the stone of the mountain, like it was made of the mountain, like it was part of the mountain. It was dark, and evil-looking. It was just about the wickedest place he had ever seen, or could imagine. There were ramparts, and towers, and walls rising up beyond the monumental crenellated outer wall.

He was glad to be sitting in a saddle; he didn’t know if his legs would have held him at the sight of the place. He had never seen anything as big or as sinister-looking as the Wizard’s Keep.

“Come on,” Fitch, said. “Before they find out what happened and send more guards.”

Morley looked around at the empty bridge. “And what happened?”

“It’s a place with magic. Anything could have happened.”

Fitch scooted his bottom forward in the saddle, urging his horse ahead. The horse didn’t like the bridge and was only too happy to run. They didn’t stop running as they barreled through the opening in the outer wall, under the spiked portcullis.

There was a fenced yard for the horses inside. Before they turned the horses loose, Fitch told Morley to leave the saddles on them so they could make a quick departure. Morley wasn’t any more interested in lingering than was Fitch. Together, they raced up the dozen wide granite steps worn smooth and swayback over the centuries, surely by the feet of countless wizards.

Inside, it was just like Franca had told him, only her words of how big it was couldn’t match the truth of the sight. A hundred feet overhead a glassed roof let in the sunlight. In the center of the tiled floor stood a clover-leaf-shaped fountain. Water shot fifteen feet into the air above the top bowl, flowing over each bigger one underneath until it ran into a pool at the bottom surrounded by a white marble wall that could be a bench.

Red marble columns were as big as Franca said. They held up arches below a balcony that ran all the way around the oval-shaped room. Morley whistled. It echoed back from the distance.

“Come on,” Fitch said, shaking himself out of his awe.

They ran through the hall Franca had told him about and burst through a door at the top of several flights of stairs. They followed a walkway round square buildings without windows and then climbed stairs that followed halfway around a tower, to a walkway tunneling under what looked to be a road overhead, before they crossed a stone bridge over a small, green courtyard far below.

At last, they came to a massive rampart as broad as a road. Fitch looked out over the right side, between the gaps in the crenellation big enough for a man to stand in. He could see the city of Aydindril spread out below. For a boy who grew up in the flat land of Anderith, it was a dizzying sight. Fitch had been impressed by a lot of things he’d seen along the way, but nothing came close to this place.

At the other end of the rampart, a dozen immense columns of variegated red stone held up a protruding entablature of dark stone. Six of the columns stood to each side of a gold-clad door. Above were more layers of fancy stonework, some of it decorated with brass plaques and round metal disks, all of them covered with strange symbols.

As they crossed the long rampart, Fitch realized the door had to be at least ten or twelve feet tall, and a good four feet wide. The gold-clad door was marked with some of the same symbols as on the plaques and disks.

When Fitch pushed on the door, it silently swung inward.

“In here,” Fitch whispered. He didn’t know why he was whispering, except that maybe he feared to wake the spirits of the wizards who haunted the place.

He didn’t want the spirits to make him jump from the rampart like the soldiers had done from the bridge; it looked like the edge dropped off down the mountain for thousands of feet.

“You sure?” Morley asked.

“I’m going in. You can wait here or go with me. It’s up to you.”

Morley’s eyes were looking all around, not seeming able to decide on where to settle. “I guess I’ll go with you.”

Inside, to each side, glass spheres, about as big as a head, sat on green marble pedestals, like armless statues waiting to greet visitors to the huge room of ornate stonework. In the middle, four columns of polished black marble, at least as big around as a horse was long, from head to tail, formed a square that supported arches at the outer edges of a central dome.

There were wrought-iron sconces holding candles all around the room, but up in the dome a ring of windows let light flood in, so they didn’t need to light the candles. Fitch felt like he was in a place the Creator Himself might have. He felt like he should drop to his knees and pray in such a place.

A red carpet led down the wing they were in. In a row down each side of the carpet were six-foot-tall white marble pedestals. Each had to be bigger around than Master Drummond’s belly. Up on top of each pedestal were different objects. There were pretty bowls, fancy gold chains, an inky black bottle, and other objects, carved from burled wood. Some of the things Fitch couldn’t make sense of.

He didn’t pay much attention to the things on the columns; he looked instead across the huge room, to the other side of the central dome. There, he saw a table piled with a clutter of things, and there, leaning against the table, looked to be the thing he’d come for.

Between each pair of the black columns topped in gold, a wing ran off from the vast central chamber. To the left it looked like a disorderly library, with books stacked all over the floor in tall columns. The wing to the right was dark.

Fitch trotted down the red carpet. At the end, broad steps, near to a dozen, went down into the sunken floor of cream-colored marble at the center of the First Wizard’s enclave below the dome. He took the steps two at a time up the other side, up toward the table before a towering round-topped window straight ahead.

A confusion of things were piled all over the table: bowls, candles, scrolls, books, jars, spheres, metal squares and triangles—there was even a skull. Other bigger objects sat cluttered around on the floor.

Morley reached for the skull. Fitch slapped his hand away.

“Don’t touch nothing.” Fitch pointed at the skull staring up at them. “That could be a wizard’s skull, and if you touch it, it might come back to life. Wizards can do that, you know.”

Morley yanked back his hand.

Fingers trembling, Fitch finally reached down and picked up the thing he’d come for. It looked just like he’d imagined it must look. The gold and silver work was as beautiful as anything Fitch had ever seen, and he’d seen a lot of fine gold and silver work at the Minister’s estate. No Ander had anything to approach the beauty of this.

“That it?” Morley asked.

Fitch ran his fingers over the raised letters in the hilt. It was the one word he could read.

“This is it. The Sword of Truth.”

Fitch felt rooted to that spot as he held the magnificent weapon, letting his fingers glide over the wire-wound hilt, the downswept cross guard, the finely wrought gold and silver scabbard. Even the leather baldric was beautifully made, feeling buttery soft between his finger and thumb.

“Well, if you’re taking that,” Morley said, “what do you think I can take?”

“Nothing,” came a voice from behind them.

They both flinched and cried, out as one. Together, they spun around.

They both blinked at what they saw, hardly believing their eyes. It was a gorgeous blue-eyed blond woman in a red leather outfit that clung like a second skin. It showed her womanly shape to an extent Fitch had never seen. The low-cut dresses the Ander women wore showed the tops of their breasts, but this outfit, even though it covered everything, somehow seemed to show more. He could see her lean, well-defined muscles flexing as she strode toward them.

“That’s not yours,” the woman said. “Give it here before you boys get hurt.”

Morley didn’t like being called a boy anymore, at least not by some lone woman. Fitch could see his powerful muscles tense.

The woman put her fists on her hips. For a woman by herself with the two of them more than her match, she had a lot of nerve. Fitch didn’t think he’d seen many women who could scowl as good as she could, but he wasn’t really afraid. He was a man on his own, now, and he didn’t have to answer to no one.

Fitch remembered how helpless Claudine Winthrop had been. He remembered how easy it was to hold her helpless. This was a woman, just like Claudine, no more.

“What are you two doing in here?” she asked.

“I guess we could ask you the same,” Morley said.

She glared at him and then held her hand out to Fitch. “That doesn’t belong to you.” She waggled her fingers. “Hand it over before I lose my temper and I end up hurting you.”

At the same instant, Fitch and Morley bolted in opposite directions. The woman went for Fitch. Fitch tossed the sword to Morley. Morley, laughing, caught the sword, waving it at the woman, teasing her with it.

Fitch cut around her back and headed toward the door. She lunged for Morley. He tossed the sword over her head and outstretched arms.

The three of them raced across the sunken floor in the center of the room. She dove for Fitch and caught his leg, tripping him. As he went down, he heaved the sword to Morley.

She was up and running before Fitch could roll to his feet. Morley shouldered one of the white marble columns, toppling it across the red carpet before her. The bowl atop the column crashed to the floor, shattering into a thousand shards that skittered across the marble and carpet with a soft chiming, almost musical, tinkling sound.

“You two don’t have any idea what you’re doing!” she yelled. “Stop it at once! That isn’t yours! This is no child’s game! You’ve no right to touch anything in this place! You could be causing great harm! Stop it! Lives are at stake!”

She and Morley danced around the opposite sides of another column. When she lunged for him, he shoved the column toward her. She cried out when the heavy gold vase atop the column tumbled and hit her shoulder. Fitch didn’t know if it was pain or rage that caused her to shout.

The three of them serpentined around the columns on both sides of the red carpet, heading ever closer to the door. Fitch and Morley tossed the sword back and forth between them, keeping her off guard. Fitch pushed over one of the columns to slow her and was shocked at how heavy it was. The way Morley shoved them over Fitch had thought they would be easy to topple; they weren’t, so he didn’t try another.

She was yelling at them to stop destroying the priceless things of magic, but when Morley toppled the one with the inky black bottle atop it, she screamed. The column crashed down. The bottle tumbled through the air.

She dove across the floor, her long blond braid flying out behind as she hit and slid. The bottle bounced through her hands, flipping up, then hit the carpet and rolled, but it didn’t break.

By the look on her face, Fitch would have thought it was her own life that was just spared by the bottle not breaking.

She scrambled to her feet and charged for them as they went through the door. Outside, Morley, chuckling, tossed the sword to Fitch as they ran along the edge of the rampart.

“You boys have no idea what is at stake. I need that sword. This is important. It doesn’t belong to you. Give it to me, please, and I will let you go.”

Morley had that look in his eye, the look like he wanted to hurt her. Hurt her bad. He’d had that look with Claudine Winthrop.

Fitch just wanted the sword, but he could see they were going to have to do something serious to stop her, else she was going to cause them no end of trouble. He wasn’t about to give up the sword. Not now, not after everything they’d been through.

“Hey, Fitch,” Morley called, “I think it’s time you had your turn at a woman. This one’s even free. What say I hold her down for you?”

Fitch surely thought she was a good enough looking woman. And she was the one causing them trouble. It would be her own fault. She wouldn’t let them be. She wouldn’t mind her own business. She had it coming.

Fitch knew that since he was doing it for the right reasons, for good reasons, he deserved to be the Seeker of Truth. This woman had no right to interfere with that.

Out in the bright sun, her red leather seemed an angrier color. Her face surely was. She looked like someone had lifted her up by her long blond braid, and dunked her in blood.

“I try to do it his way,” she muttered to herself. “I try to please him.” Fitch thought she might be crazy, standing there, hands on hips, talking to the sky. “And what does it get me? This. Enough. I’ve had enough of this.”

She forced out an angry breath, then pulled free red leather gloves she had tucked over her double strap belt cinching the top of her outfit tight at the waist. The way she drew on the gloves, wiggling her fingers into them, had a frightening finality to it.

“I’m not warning you boys again,” she said, this time in a growl that lifted the hair at the back of Fitch’s neck. “Give it over, and give it over now.”

While she was glaring grimly at Fitch, Morley moved on her. He swung his big fist to punch the side of her head. As hard as he swung, Fitch thought he was going to kill her with the first blow.

The woman didn’t even look Morley’s way. She caught his fist in the flat of her hand, yanked it around, and in a blink spun under it, twisting his arm around behind him. Her teeth clenched, and she drove his arm up. Fitch was shocked to hear Morley’s shoulder let out a sickening pop. Morley cried out. The pain dropped him to his knees.

This woman was like no woman Fitch had ever seen before. Now, she was coming for him. She wasn’t running, but striding with a determination that caught Fitch’s breath short.

He stood frozen, not knowing what to do. He didn’t want to abandon his friend, but his feet wanted to run. He didn’t want to give up the sword, either. He blindly groped the crenellated wall behind him as he started backing along it. Morley was up. He rushed the woman. She just kept coming for Fitch—for the sword. Fitch decided he might have to take the sword out and stab her—in the leg, or something, he speculated. He could wound her.

But then it didn’t look like he was going to have to; Morley was closing on her, an enraged bull at full charge. There would be no stopping the big man this time.

Without even turning to the onrushing Morley, she smoothly sidestepped—never taking her glare from Fitch—and brought her arm up, ramming her elbow squarely, into Morley’s face.

His head snapped back. Blood sprayed out.

Not even breathing hard, she turned and seized Morley’s good left hand. With her fingers in his palm and her thumb on the back of his hand, she bent it down at the wrist until Morley’s knees were buckling as she backed him toward the wall.

Morley was whimpering like a child, begging her to stop. His other arm was useless. His nose had been flattened horribly. Blood gushed from his face. It had to be all over her, too, but with her red leather, Fitch couldn’t tell.

She backed Morley steadily, mercilessly, to the wall. Without a word, she seized him by the throat with her other hand, and, calmly, indifferently, shoved him backward through the notch of a crenellation, out into thin air.

Fitch’s jaw dropped. He never expected her to do that—for it to go that far.

Morley screamed his lungs out as he dropped backward down the side of the mountain. Fitch stood frozen, listening to his friend from the flat place of Anderith plummet down the side of a mountain. Morley’s scream abruptly ended.

The woman wasn’t talking anymore, making any more demands. She was simply coming for Fitch, now. Her blue eyes fixed on him. He knew without doubt that if she caught him, she’d kill him, too.

This was no Claudine Winthrop. This was no woman who was going to call him “sir.”

Fitch’s feet finally got their way.

If there was one thing about Fitch that was better than Morley and all his muscles, it was that Fitch could run like the wind. Now, he ran like a gale.

A quick glance back shocked him; the woman could run faster. She was tall, and had longer legs. She was going to catch him. If she did, she’d smash his face, just as easily as she smashed Morley’s. She’d throw him to his death, too. Or take the sword from him and cut out his heart.

Fitch could feel tears streaming down his cheeks. He’d never run so fast. She was running faster.

He flew down steps, falling more than running. He dove over the side of the landing and down the next flight. Everything was a blur. Stone walls, windows, railings, steps—all flashed by in a smear of light and dark.

Fitch, clutching the Sword of Truth to his chest, sailed through a doorway, caught the edge of the thick door with his free hand, and slammed it shut. As the door was still banging closed in its frame, he toppled a big stone pedestal across the floor behind the door. It was heavier than the white marble columns, but his terror gave him strength.

Just as the granite pedestal hit the floor, she crashed into the heavy oak door. The impact drove the door open a few inches. Dust billowed up. Everything was still for a moment; then the woman let out a dazed groan and Fitch knew she’d been hurt.

Not wasting the chance, he ran on through the Wizard’s Keep, closing doors, pushing things over behind them if there was anything handy. He didn’t even know if he was going the right way. His lungs burned as he ran, crying for his friend. Fitch could hardly believe it had happened, that Morley was dead. He kept seeing the image over and over in his mind. He almost expected the big dumb fool to catch up and grin and say it was a joke.

The sword in Fitch’s arms had cost Morley his life. Fitch had to wipe at his eyes so he could see. A look over his shoulder showed a long, twisting, empty hallway.

But he could hear doors crashing open. She was coming.

She wasn’t going to quit for nothing. She was an avenging spirit come to take his life in return for him removing the Sword of Truth from its place in the Wizard’s Keep. He ran on, faster.

Fitch burst out into the sunlight, disoriented for a moment. He twisted around and saw the horses. Three. His and Morley’s, and the woman’s. Saddlebags with her things hung on the fence.

In order to free his hands, Fitch ducked his head under the sword’s baldric, setting the leather strap over his right shoulder and diagonally across his chest to let the weapon hang at his left hip as it was designed. He caught up the reins of all three horses. He seized the saddle of the one closest and sprang up.

With a cry to urge them on, he gave his horse his heels. It was her horse; the stirrups were adjusted too long and his feet wouldn’t reach them, so he hugged his legs to the horse’s belly and hung on for his life as the big animal galloped through the paddock gate with the other two horses being pulled along behind.

As the horses hit the road at full speed, the woman in red stumbled out of the Keep, blood all over the side of her face. She clutched a black bottle in one hand. It was the bottle from back in the Keep, the bottle that had fallen but not broken.

He bent forward over the horse’s neck as it raced down the road. Fitch glimpsed back over his shoulder. The woman was running down the road after them. He had her horse. She was on foot, a long way from another horse.

Fitch tried to push thoughts of Morley from his mind. He had the Sword of Truth. Now he could go home and use it to help him prove he didn’t rape Beata, and that he did what he did to Claudine Winthrop to protect the Minister from her ruinous lies.

Fitch looked over his shoulder again. She was a lot farther back, but still running. He knew he dare not stop for anything. She was coming. She was coming after him and she wasn’t going to stop for anything or anyone.

She wasn’t going to give up. She wasn’t going to rest. She wasn’t going to stop. If she caught him, she’d tear his heart out.

Fitch thumped his heels against the horse, urging her to run faster.