Fire Games (Pyforial Mage Trilogy: Book 1) Read online

  “Depending how deep the lake is, we could be here for weeks before you find it.”

  “A dalion is worth more than a few weeks of searching.”

  “Not if our redemption scrolls expire because of it.”

  Clad in just my undershorts, I walked to the edge of the water. “Then while I start diving, could you figure out how long we can stay here and still make it on time?”

  “I’ll do that as I look for food,” she sang, “the days we can stay, I will conclude. But I will be bored if we don’t move, and I fear the answer you won’t approve.”

  I thought for a second, coming up with my own rhyme. “Neeko will go if he must. The answer you give, he will trust.” I didn’t sing it as she did, but she applauded nonetheless.

  “That was fun. You should rhyme more often.”

  “Too much effort.” I dove into the water.

  First I needed to know how deep this lake was. I swam downward, my body’s natural tendency to float fighting against me. The water actually felt clean and refreshing even though I knew it wasn’t. I tried opening my eyes, but I could see nothing.

  My hands reached the bottom in about the span of four heartbeats. I knew myself to be a strong swimmer, so this shallow lake shouldn’t take more than a couple days to search completely. Shaped like an oval, it stretched maybe fifteen yards at its longest. I pressed my hands against the soft dirt at the bottom, feeling for anything I could. There were rocks and stringy plants that brushed aside with ease. I came up for air with nothing, but it was only my first dive. There could be hundreds more.

  I caught my breath, then dove back down. I planned to start on one side and move slowly toward the other. I might double or triple check certain spots without realizing it, but that was better than searching at random. I couldn’t stand the thought of missing the dalion by the width of my palm and then searching the rest of the lake for it.

  This time I came across a different kind of plant than before. This one felt like hair, and it seemed to be coming out of a rock. I pushed my hands around it, making sure not to miss any coins. As I expected my hand to come off the rock and back onto the silt, I felt something else instead, something strangely soft. Running out of breath, I moved my hands frantically to figure out what it was.

  Then I felt it—an arm, and something was grabbing me! My fingers were caught in another set of fingers. I yanked my hand free and kicked to the surface as quickly as I could. With fright propelling me, I paddled hard to the edge and scrambled out.

  “Gods, what was that!” I stared back at the water, not sure what I expected to emerge and come for me. A person? A monster? When the green water became still again and nothing happened, I started to hear my thoughts.

  It had to be a body. My fingers must’ve found their way between the fingers on one of its hands.

  Still…a body. Whose was it? Why was it at the bottom of this small lake? I knew one thing—I didn’t want to go anywhere near it. I decided to walk around and start from the other side.

  I stopped just before putting my foot in, unable to get my mind off the body. I thought they floated. Was something holding it down there? Had this person been drowned, murdered and dumped in, or met with an accidental death? Maybe even committed suicide?

  I didn’t feel right getting back in the lake with it. Maybe if I hauled it out, I would feel better. Doing so also would help me figure out what might’ve happened. Gods, how I didn’t want to touch it again, but I’d already made up my mind. I walked back to the other side.

  It took me three dives to find it again. I tested its arms and hands for movement, feeling none. And why would there be? This wasn’t some creature out of a storybook ready to sprout back to life and drown me for disturbing its sleep. If I was going to be the strong man that I wanted to be, I couldn’t let fear get the better of me.

  On the next dive, I scooped my arms beneath the body and started to lift it. But its nose pushed against my chest, and I let go, barely holding in a scream.

  I was ready for anything the dive after. I wouldn’t let go this time. But as I tried to swim up with it, I felt something pulling it back down.

  It took a few more dives before I found the sack of rocks tied around its waist. I didn’t know how it was tied or how many knots there were, so it took countless dives to free the body. But finally I did, and I felt it rise.

  I broke the surface first. It followed soon after, facedown. I could see it was a man.

  “Two hells, what is that!” Shara yelled from somewhere behind me. I was too busy dragging the body onto the muddy grass to look away.

  Did she really expect me to answer? Obviously it was a body.

  “Neeko! My gods!” She ran over but recoiled the moment she was close. “Neeko! That’s…that’s a man!”

  “A dead man.” He was completely out of the water now and looked to be in his twenties. There was no injury that stood out. He just looked wet and asleep.

  “By the look of him, he hasn’t been dead longer than a day or two,” Shara said.

  “How do you know?”

  “A body in this lake would be unrecognizable if left for more than a few days.” She bent down and sniffed. “Doesn’t smell too much, so he probably died yesterday.” She slowly crouched lower, looking like a kitten whose curiosity was barely stronger than her trepidation. There was something I couldn’t resist doing as Shara reached out to poke the body in the shoulder.

  I gathered pyforial energy as quietly as I could, as the process made a windy sound when I moved a lot at once. I navigated the energy under his arm and held it steady. As soon as she touched him, I forced the energy up, flinging the dead man’s arm into the air.

  Shara screamed so loud it was as if death itself was after her. She fell over backward in her hurry to sprint away. After a quick scramble on the ground, she was up and running toward the trees, still screaming. Even if I’d wanted to, I was laughing too hard to tell her I’d done it.

  She peered out from around a tree to see me still kneeling beside the dead man, laughing. It must’ve become clear what I’d done. She came out with her fists pressed against her hips.

  “That was absolutely contemptible! I nearly wet myself. And you made me drop all the berries I’d collected for us!” She began picking the berries off the ground, stopping suddenly and looking at me. “That was you, right?”

  “Of course, Shara. Don’t tell me you believe the dead can come back to life.”

  “I believe what I see, and I saw that man’s arm lift toward my throat.” I laughed. It was nowhere near her throat. “So I don’t believe it’s foolish to ensure it was you.”

  “I won’t do it again. Come here and help me figure out what happened to him.” I hadn’t found any wounds yet, but I hadn’t looked closely. Shara cautiously walked to the corpse’s side. I noticed the bruising around his neck just as she got there.

  “He was choked.” I pointed. “And when I found him in the water, a bag of rocks was tied to him.”

  “So he was murdered.”

  “Yes, but why?”

  “Doesn’t concern us.”

  My curiosity made me ignore her words. I searched his pockets. There was a tightly folded square of paper in his pants. Shara came to look over my shoulder as I pulled it open carefully so as not to rip it.

  Many of the words were smudged, but something told me I knew what this was. There appeared to be a list, with a name and…

  “It’s a redemption scroll,” Shara called out. She pointed at the word “Lanhine” that I hadn’t seen yet. “From our town. And look, Betsy Baker’s name is right here.”

  My eyes went back to the top to see if I could make out this man’s name. “Klenlen…something?”

  “Klemen,” Shara corrected me. “That’s surely an ‘m’ in the middle. Klemen Hiyzer. Don’t know the name. Do you?”

  “No.” After discovering he had nothing else of interest in his pockets, I decided I could wonder about him while diving for my dalion. “I’
m going back in.”

  “The answer is one hour.”

  “What answer?”

  “That’s how long you can look for the dalion.”

  “You have to give me more time than that! I just spent an hour getting poor Klemen out of the water!”

  “Poor Klemen is dead! He doesn’t care where he lies. Besides, I’m not the one who decided we need to reach Glaine in fifteen days. You can blame Betsy Baker for that. We’ve gone about sixty miles from Lanhine. It’s another one hundred and fifty miles to Glaine. We’ve traveled for eight days, which gives us only seven more to get there. One hundred and fifty miles in seven days means we need to travel about twenty-one and a half miles each day, including today.”

  I thought for a moment. “And if we leave tomorrow instead, we would need to travel twenty-five miles a day. Not much difference.”

  She shook her head. “We can’t risk it. Twenty-one is going to be hard enough. You could be here for weeks looking for that coin. One hour.” She stomped her foot and thrust her finger at the water. “Better use that time searching instead of arguing.”

  “Damn” was all I could mutter as I dove back in. I gave up on the system I’d originally planned of searching every inch of the lake’s bottom. Now I needed speed…and luck.

  After three dives without finding anything, I noticed Shara squinting at Klemen Hiyzer’s redemption scroll. She yelled out to me. “This was given to him the same day as ours. The twentieth. We might’ve walked by him without remembering. I wish I knew why he was killed.”

  It did pique my curiosity, but I didn’t waste my breath responding. Curiosity could wait.

  I lost track of the dives. Somewhere between fifteen and twenty, I reached down and finally felt what had to be a coin. My heart jumped as I grabbed it. I had some breath left, so I fought against the urge to swim up. I found another coin with my other hand! Right after breaking the surface, I opened my hands.

  Two silver. Damn.

  “Watch out,” I called to Shara, then tossed the two coins toward her without taking the time to aim. She shielded her face with her arm. One of them bounced off it.

  “Ouch, Neeko! Why throw them at me?”

  “Didn’t mean to hit you. Make sure they don’t get lost in the grass, please.”

  I found another silver with my next dive. I tried to throw this one so that it wouldn’t hit Shara. “Watch out,” I warned. Still sitting, she put my bag in front of her face…so she didn’t see that my aim was perfect. The money landed a few feet from her. But it must’ve hit a rock, for it bounced and then caught her on the knee.

  “Ouch! Two hells, Neeko! Throw it near me, not at me.”

  “It was a perfect throw, landing well before you, but it hit something and bounced! You should dive with me instead of sitting there.”

  “I have no other undergarments besides what I have on, and I’m not getting them soaked with slimy water.”

  “So go naked.”

  She smirked as if I was joking.

  “Come on, we don’t have time. It’s a dalion, Shara. A dalion! I won’t look at you.”

  “Forget that. I’m not jumping in there naked.”

  “Not for a dalion?” I was incredulous and already quite tired from diving.

  “If it was certain I’d find it, then yes, I would for a dalion. But there’s no way to know if I would.” She huffed and stood. “How much have you searched?”

  “Less than a tenth. Please, Shara. It’s a dalion! What if you keep your underclothing on?”

  “With nothing to change into, I’ll have on wet undergarments all day.”

  The way she gazed at the water, I could tell she was considering it. “Shara, I didn’t feel comfortable taking my clothes off in front of you either, but—”

  “You seemed pretty comfortable to me! I’d even say you were eager to take your shirt off to show me what was underneath.”

  “I wasn’t.” And what did she mean? I knew myself to be muscular, but some of the blacksmith apprentices I’d seen just made me feel embarrassed. Many worked shirtless, their bulging muscles glistening with sweat, their arms the thickness of my thighs. “I’ll turn away until you’re in the water. Will you please help me?”

  “Fine. Look away.”

  I turned around in the water and leaned back to float. I needed some rest if I was going to keep diving for the rest of this hour as I planned. I heard a splash. “Can I turn around?”

  “Yes.” Shara paddled toward me. She came up surprisingly close, but the green water stopped me from seeing anything. “Where have you searched already?”

  “From the shore to here and around the center, although I might’ve missed some coins. The three I found were right below me.” I pushed away a dead floating spider that had glided between us. They were all over.

  She sucked in air, then flipped to dive down. I saw her bare ass pop out of the water before it followed her under. I didn’t mean to notice it, but it would be a lie to say I regretted what I saw.

  When I finished my dive and came up with nothing, she was already at the surface waiting for me. “I think I felt my rear come out of the water,” she said. “Did you see it?”

  “No.” I figured she would feel better if I lied. And more importantly, she would be more likely to stay in the water.

  “Good.” She dove down again, her ass peeking out of the water once more before slipping back in.

  I was starting to feel somewhat depraved, especially after I’d lied, so I moved away from her and didn’t watch her dive down after that.

  I found two more coins, silvers, before Shara found her first. “I got one!” she yelled, then peered into her hand. “Oh, it’s just a pit.” Nonetheless, she tried to throw it where I’d tossed the others, but it fell short, plopping back into the water. “Two hells.”

  “Just leave it and throw harder next time.”

  After a while, and another silver, I needed to rest. Before I pushed my feet out to lay back in the water, I found Shara near the edge.

  “I’m tired.” She appeared to be standing where it was just shallow enough for her toes to reach. “I’ll dive more in a moment.”

  “I’m resting as well. How much more time can we spend?”

  “I’d say not much longer. We’ll rest, then go at it again until we need another rest. Then that should be it. We need to start riding. You can always come back for it later.”

  I hated the idea of leaving a dalion in the water, but with two more waiting in Glaine, I supposed I could. I reminded myself of the thief’s long horse face as I shut my eyes and waited for my breathing to calm.

  I heard Shara swim toward me, then dive under. I was still resting by the time I heard the water break again.

  “Neeko.”

  “What?”

  She swam toward me before answering. “Turn around.”

  She had her arm extended. Pinched between her two fingers was a gold coin. My dalion!

  “I found it.” She smirked, then shouted, “Two hells Neeko, I found it!”

  A scream of joy came out of me. I threw my arms around her. I wanted to jump up and down, but we both started to sink as soon as I grabbed her. Her head dipped under the water as I thought I heard her shouting my name. I hooked my arm under hers, helping her stay up.

  She had a look of fright, but she was laughing as well. “You almost made me drop it!” She handed it to me above the water.

  I was so overjoyed. I kissed it in my hand over and over. Then I grabbed Shara’s head and kissed her cheek. “Thank you!” I kissed her again. “Thank you!”

  She giggled but pulled back. “Neeko, this is too strange when I’m naked. Wait until I have clothes on to thank me.”

  Our laughter and excitement didn’t fade as we treaded water, smiling at each other. I had to stop myself from thanking her after saying it three more times.

  I stayed in the water, looking the other way until Shara was ready. It took her some time to dry and dress. I swam over to the edge
when she was done. She had our water pouch in her hands, which I knew was nearly empty.

  “Since you’re still in the water, can you swim to the center of the lake and fill it with water closest to the bottom? I think there’s a better chance of it being safe to drink.”

  When I was done, I got out and used the same blanket as she had to dry myself. I figured there was no sense in soiling both of them with dirty lake water. It was my fault we needed to get in, so I would take the soiled blanket for sleeping. I put on the same shirt and pants I’d been wearing since Cessri. I didn’t mind. I was one dalion richer. That meant I had one dalion, six ruffs, and the pit that Shara had retrieved on her way out.

  I sat beside Shara as we shared swigs from the water skin, her raven hair still damp.

  “Thank you again,” I said.

  She smiled. “You’re thanking me for luck, but I’ll take it.” She pushed her cheek toward me with raised eyebrows and a silly grin.

  I laughed as I kissed her cheek.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  We had no time to bury poor Klemen, so we left him by the lake. My good mood was ruined when Shara reminded me we’d be crossing Talmor Desert today. “The terrislak awaits.” Her tone was heroic, yet I couldn’t tell if she was being facetious.

  “We’re going to be avoiding it, not fighting it, right?”

  “Can’t you lift it, pyforial mage?” she teased.

  I gave her a look that warned her not to mention that again.

  “Sorry. I’ve always had trouble keeping my mouth shut when I don’t see anyone around.” She glanced around as we rode. “What exactly can you lift with it?” She was quieter this time.

  “Nearly everything up to twice my weight that I can get the energy around, but that’s raw lifting. Depending how I use the energy, I could lift a lot more by pulling.”

  “How would that work?”

  “I shape it in a way that allows me to use a pulley system. Can you shape bastial energy?”

  The corner of her mouth twisted. “No one can shape bastial energy. It doesn’t stay together. It would be like asking you to exhale in such a way that the air comes out of your mouth shaped like a spear.”