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

  “Not many, maybe five hundred. The rest are in the forest to the west. I know what to do.”

  “Not many?” Eizle blurted. “Five hundred is us times two hundred and fifty! Does that sound like ‘not many’ to you?”

  “We don’t have time to argue. They could be moving into the city soon.”

  “Let them. We need to go to Glaine.”

  “Shara could be there still, and so are thousands of innocent people.”

  “This isn’t my fight.”

  “I don’t know what you think your fight is, but this is it! Remember when we first heard what pyforial energy could do? We both wanted to learn it so we could save the world, though we didn’t even know from what.” I pointed toward the enemy army. “That’s what.”

  He dismissed me with a light scoff. “You’ve read too many stories.”

  “Eizle!” I whispered furiously. “We’re pyforial mages now. We have power. If we don’t use it, then what’s the point?”

  “I will use it, just not for this.”

  I wanted to grab his shoulders and shake him! I settled for shaking my fist. “There’s nothing that’s more important! I need your help. Or…are you allegiant to the south now? Do you owe the red priest for getting you out of prison?”

  “What? Of course not, Neeko!” He sounded sincere.

  “Then at least listen to my plan.”

  “Will the diymas even understand it?”

  “Only one way to find out.” I frantically gestured with my arms. The creatures rushed down the trees so quickly they might’ve fallen slower. There was just enough light for me to draw in the dirt. The diymas crowded around my crude sketches as I used arrows to represent movement that I hoped they understood.

  Luckily it was a simple plan, and soon they were communicating with each other using SE. The air filled with it quickly, all sorts of shapes I’d never seen before appearing and dispersing an instant later.

  “Think they got it?” Eizle asked.

  His question was answered when we saw the same plan I’d just drawn now depicted in the air.

  The diymas pushed us toward our enemies, stopping once we began walking on our own. There was a rustle behind us, and when I looked back they were gone, hidden up in the trees again.

  The red priest was still on his rock, preaching about the gods. A few of the fires had been put out. They would march soon unless I could stop them.

  Getting close enough yet remaining out of sight was the first problem. Eizle and I had determined we needed to be within ten yards of the red priest for this to work. Pyforial energy was increasingly more difficult to control the farther I manipulated it from my body. I could lift Shara with ease if she was close enough to touch, but I could barely sway the leaves on a tree branch at twenty yards. Our only hope was blending into the army. Many weren’t in uniform yet, and Eizle and I both had on dark clothing. I didn’t see how they would recognize us as outsiders.

  Eizle and I nodded at each other and separated. I let my nervous breath out, tried to ignore my thudding heart, and calmly walked into the midst of the army. I fiddled with the buttons on my pants as if I’d just finished relieving myself. As I passed between the shoulders of the first enemy soldiers, I felt like I was jumping into water infested with sharks.

  The red priest went on. “And Glaine will fall after we regroup with the rest of King Marteph’s army. The will of the gods is in our hands and our minds.”

  I crept closer, now unable to refrain from bumping into those in my way. None paid me any mind, and I started to ready myself with a slow breath.

  I stopped listening to the priest, focusing my mind on one thing: feeling for pyforial energy. Had Eizle already begun gathering it? Yes! I could feel much more than what I knew to be naturally in the air clustered somewhere to my right. He was ahead of me. I needed to catch up.

  Careful to keep my hands at my sides, I used my mind to pull the energy above my head. This was the easy part. It was like kneading dough into a ball. Now I had to will that ball over to the red priest. Without being able to see it, I couldn’t wrap it under his arm as carefully as I wanted to. It would have to happen all at once and at the same time as Eizle.

  Neither he nor I were powerful enough at this distance to lift the priest on our own. But if we each took one side as we had with the terrislak, we could bring him off the ground. I hoped the diymas were close and ready. I couldn’t search the trees for them without losing focus or tipping off our plan.

  I coughed loudly once into my hand. That was it. Eizle better have heard, otherwise this all could be for nothing. I willed the py to gather under the red priest’s left arm. His hands stopped gesturing, and I could see by the quick snap of his head that he felt it.

  Hurry Eizle!

  The red priest turned his head to his other arm, and I knew we were ready to lift. He stopped his speech, slowly rising from the rock as I struggled not to grunt from the strain. Men started gasping and shouting prayers.

  “Holy gods of life and death!”

  “The will of the gods is before us!”

  The red priest rose higher, a look of bewilderment on his face. Come on, diymas!

  The men’s prayers grew louder as the red priest went higher. A green storm cloud emerged over his head, circling ominously. It thickened, darkening and growing. The gasps of the crowd changed, audibly fearful now. The red priest was clearly unsure what the rest of his army was seeing as he looked about frantically. Then his head tilted back, and he found the cloud.

  His legs flailed as he tried to get free. I felt him pushing against my pyforial energy in his wild attempts to move his arms. It was like trying to hold on to a floundering fish.

  I squeezed harder and saw his shirt tighten around his shoulders. I hoped everyone else was too focused on the ever-darkening cloud to notice. Chaos began to ensue as it sank and closed around him like a huge mouth clamping shut. Soldiers ran to the rock. Two jumped up and reached for their leader, but they couldn’t do anything but swipe away the thick sartious smoke from below his feet. Others shouted to check the trees. More were terrified, fleeing as they screamed about diymas or demons, or diymas being demons. I couldn’t tell which.

  The red priest disappeared in the dense cloud. I couldn’t help but grunt as I struggled to hold the py in place without being able to see anything.

  The cloud shrank as it hardened. Among the chorus of screams was clearly the red priest’s. It rang out for the span of an entire breath until suddenly muffled by SE filling his throat. I remembered how he’d slit Callyn’s, and rage kept me focused as the weight on my pyforial energy increased from the thickening SE. He and the green cloud sank for a breath, but then Eizle and I got him steady again.

  There was a squeaking sound as the SE came together. All the diymas were pushing it in on itself as hard as they could. I barely held on as the priest became twice as heavy.

  Suddenly I could see him again, frozen in place within the translucent block. I completely lost control of the py entrapped with him, but I quickly made a bed of it below the emerald block. I felt Eizle do the same, helping me keep it afloat as it glistened from the light of the fire. I wanted to hold the red priest there as long as I could, knowing the sight would cause his men to flee in fear.

  One of the two soldiers on the rock was screaming, and I could see his hand had gotten trapped in his attempt to free the red priest. Frantic with absolute terror, he started to jump and pull, tugging so hard his wrist was likely to snap off. I couldn’t hold on any longer with his added weight.

  The block of SE crashed down on top of the two men, crushing them between it and the rock. It bounced, chipping and cracking but not even coming close to shattering, then rolled across the fire and spewed burning embers into the air. Nearly all the soldiers had fled by the time the red priest came to a stop upside down in his new sartious home, his terrified expression forever on display.

  Eizle and I found each other and tried to rush out of there. We made eye conta
ct with a burly soldier who was searching for something. From the face he made when he saw us, it seemed that we were what he was looking for.

  “It was pyforial mages!” he shouted. “There!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Eizle flicked his hand, and all two hundred pounds of the burly soldier toppled backward. We ran without knowing where we were going. Some chased us while others ran beside us, too caught up in their own fear to realize what was really happening. I noticed movement in the trees, the diymas, but I didn’t know what they were doing.

  I slammed my toes into some unseen rock or root, causing me to stumble while the sound of boots closed in from behind. I spun around to find three soldiers right in front of me with their swords cocked.

  I swiped a long stretch of py under their knees as hard as I could. It took the first two down, but it didn’t have the momentum to make it through to the third before I lost my grip on it. Eizle shouted and pushed out his hands as if shoving a boulder down a hill. The energy struck the third soldier in the chest and he soared backward, his outstretched arms and legs lagging behind as he flew.

  All around us were shouts. “Pyforial mages! Pyforial mages! They killed Priest Karvrek. So did the diymas!”

  Instantly, they surrounded us. There were too many on every side except behind us.

  “Back!” I called to Eizle. I used py to shove the two soldiers who were getting up, and they fell flat on their backs.

  The blackness between trees looked like doors. One of them had to lead us away and not into more soldiers, but which? Apparently Eizle had a different idea than running. He stopped and pointed his palm at the closest man, and the enemy’s sword ripped free. Eizle spun as he shouted a battle cry, and the floating sword followed him as if connected. It hurled into another wave of soldiers coming toward us, impaling one man in the stomach. He keeled over with a scream.

  Eizle tried to tug another sword free from the soldier next to the one he’d impaled, but this enemy was ready and tightened his grip. The sword still flew—dragging the man with it. He scraped against the ground until the sword went no farther and Eizle gave up on it. The same soldier rose to launch himself at us. I pushed him aside with py so that he crashed into the others ready to strike us with their blades. In the frenzy of the collision, the soldier I’d flung was pierced through his back. His scream stopped all of them for the moment…except for one still charging.

  We held our ground and grabbed him with the resilient energy. He tried to hack it away from his arms, but his sword glanced off and came out of his hand.

  Eizle shot his hand up, and the soldier’s sword mimicked the motion, flying up and impaling him through his chin. He slumped to the ground.

  I felt a pang for holding the man still while Eizle pierced him. I wasn’t outright opposed to killing like Shara, but something about the double teaming made me lose all enthusiasm for hurting another person.

  I was glad to turn and find no one else in front of us. We ran through the dark doors of shadows between trees, and I felt the ground begin to shake as something crashed behind us. A look over my shoulder revealed blocks of sartious energy falling from the trees, crushing fleeing soldiers.

  I stopped and started back because archers were shooting into the trees and mages were casting fireballs. Dead diymas were falling. I grabbed the bow from an archer’s hand. Eizle pulled the wand out of a mage’s grasp. We disarmed two more, then another two. They all took one look at us and fled with the others.

  Then it went quiet. My heart still raced, adrenaline fueling me for battle. But there was no battle to feed it. I ran forward, looking for more opposition.

  The sight of the bodies drained my aggression quickly. I took one last look at the red priest upside down in his sartious sarcophagus. Priest Karvrek. I wished I’d never learned his name or his reasoning behind the fires. Everything was easier when he was just the red priest, the nameless leader who’d burned cities and killed Callyn. Now he was a man with a name, a man doing what he believed to be right. He actually thought the gods supported his efforts.

  If the gods did exist, I didn’t want to live in a world where they favored a man like him.

  “Neeko! Neeko!” Whoever was shouting my name was far away. It became louder as the person came closer. “Neeko!” Then I knew who it was.

  Gods, Shara, stop announcing your location to hundreds of enemies. They may be fleeing, but who knew what they would do if they came across her? Her innocent face didn’t exactly instill terror. With my heart in my throat, I ran toward her voice.

  Eizle and I jumped between blocks of SE and trees, but her shouting had stopped. “Shara, where are you?”

  No answer.

  “Shara!”

  “Here!”

  Eizle and I broke through the trees to find Shara riding toward us. Relief spread across her face, then she gave a look over her shoulder at the backs of two people chasing an enemy soldier. I didn’t know who they were, nor did I care in that moment. Shara jumped from her mount, and we embraced. With my arms firmly around her, it came to mind exactly how worried I’d been she would be hurt. I held her tight, one hand coming protectively around the back of her head.

  “See any others?” I asked her and Eizle.

  “They all ran,” Eizle answered, then pointed at the backs of the two people just catching up to the fleeing swordsman. “Who are they?” The small woman shot the soldier with a fireball, then the young man hopped off his mount and jammed down his sword.

  “Who are they Shara!” Eizle repeated, panicked now, though I didn’t know why.

  Shara pulled out of my arms. “I bumped into them in Antilith.”

  The two of them were coming back now, pulling their mounts behind them. Eizle hurried toward them, squinting to make out their faces in the darkness.

  “We just want to talk.” The petite woman had a familiar voice.

  “Stay back!” Eizle shouted. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  They stopped. I walked toward them, needing to know why they looked so familiar, but Shara gently took my hand.

  “I think we should move back as well,” she whispered, her worry evident.

  The petite woman put up her hands, coming closer against Eizle’s wishes. “We just need to talk, that’s all.”

  “Effie?” I asked.

  “Yes, is that you Neeko?”

  “Yes.” Then I recognized Steffen with her.

  “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say,” Eizle grunted, now subdued as if he was about to be punished.

  “Is it because you know we’re going to ask about Klemen?”

  My stomach turned. What did my friend have to do with the body we’d found in the lake?

  “What did you do to him and his horse?” Steffen asked.

  “Oh my gods,” Shara whispered.

  Eizle had a hard look in his eyes. He’d killed those soldiers as if they were wild animals. But could he really have killed Klemen?

  “Eizle?” I feared what he was going to do.

  He was so still.

  Shara spoke with a tremble. “We found Klemen’s body in a lake between Cessri and Talmor Desert.”

  Eizle turned away and made no sound. I couldn’t ask if he’d killed Klemen. I needed to know, but I just couldn’t ask.

  “It’s best if I leave.” Eizle’s voice was calm, collected.

  “Don’t,” I said, but my tone was unenthusiastic. “Don’t leave,” I tried again.

  Shara placed her hand on my back. “Neeko.”

  “She’s right, Neeko.” Eizle turned. Tears dripped from his chin, yet his voice didn’t waver. “I promised myself I would do whatever it took. I can’t let anything stop me. Klemen…he was a nice man. A gentle man. Like you, Neeko. He reminded me of you.” His words gave me chills.

  Anger followed shortly after. “You would kill me if I got in your way?”

  For a long while, Eizle stood there with his gaze lowered. “I don’t know.”

  �
�What are you doing that’s so important!”

  “Some evils are so terrible that extinguishing their fire is worth sacrificing some good to get it done.”

  “Then you’re no different than the red priest,” I said.

  “Maybe I’m not. I hope one day you’ll understand.”

  “Help me understand now!”

  “I’m going to get my horse from our camp. Then I’m going to Glaine. It’s best we ignore each other if we cross paths again.” He paused, giving anyone else a chance to speak.

  No one said a word.

  “I’m sorry, Neeko. I’ve never been sorrier about anything.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “Tainting the memory of our friendship.” And with that, Eizle walked away.

  “My horse is with his,” I muttered.

  Shara rubbed my back. Her soothing touch fought back the numbness trying to take over my body. “Let’s give him time to leave before we get your mount.”

  “How did you know we were here?” I asked, remembering she was shouting my name before I’d seen her.

  “We were on our way back to camp when soldiers started running across our path. Eventually I saw you near the dead priest in his sartious block.”

  “We ran into each other in Antilith,” Effie said. “She sang some strange greeting rhyme. I thought she was insane before I remembered her from the inn.”

  “I mentioned Eizle, and the next thing I knew they were warning me about how dangerous he is. He really was in prison, Neeko. He attacked people with py. There were more than a dozen witnesses.”

  “Yes, soon after you left, he told me he was imprisoned.” Though, not that he’d attacked people with py. People…plural. “How did he get out?”

  Effie answered, “He must’ve escaped from a breach in the prison. We ran by it on our way out of Cessri. It was half destroyed by chunks of trees the southern army flung into the city.”

  “What about Klemen?” Shara asked. “How much do you know about him?”

  “He was going to Glaine,” Steffen said. “He met Eizle outside Cessri after the attack. When he found out Eizle was headed to the same place, he figured it would be better if they went together. We’d also decided to return to Glaine to ask your king for a different pyforial mage. We hadn’t seen Eizle or met Klemen outside Cessri, but we spotted Eizle with him later. They galloped away at the sight of us, and we lost them.”