The Shattered Land_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [115]
He was on fire! He could feel the searing heat as his clothing caught flame and smell the stench of burning hair. At the same moment, Zulaje landed a solid blow on his spear, and the pole shattered in burning shards.
Rolling back, Daine slapped himself with his hands. His scalp was burned, his clothes were charred and burnt through in places, but after a few moments, he’d managed to put out the fire.
Zulaje was standing above him, one point of her weapon leveled at his head. He could only see her silhouette as she gazed at him through her burning shield.
“The tradition of flame brings you to Holuar, outlander, but you need no legs to fulfill the prophecy. Will you walk?”
Daine sighed and slowly rose to his feet. “Fine.” Zulaje stepped away as he stood, and he could see that she’d perfectly matched his reach.
“Then you will walk ahead, with my blade at your back.” She gestured for him to move forward.
The other guard had disappeared, along with his injured comrade; Daine imagined he had gone in search of a healer. A trail of blood drops could be seen running down the hallway.
“I would tell you that his death will mean your own.” Zulaje’s voice was barely audible over the crackling flames that surrounded her, “but I suspect he’ll outlive you either way.”
Harmattan studied the patch of glass on the ground. Can you feel it, little brother?
“Feel what?” The supposed door seemed completely unremarkable, and Pierce was more concerned with Lei. She was surrounded by Hydra on the far side of the clearing, and Pierce could see her glaring in his peripheral vision.
The spirit bound within the door. Watching. Waiting.
Pierce looked down at the glass. “It’s alive?”
Alive as an airship is alive. A half-life at best, but it is a beginning. Study the glass. Look for the fire within, the reflection of a flame you cannot see. That is the spirit within. It was bound over forty thousand years ago. For tens of thousands of years it has waited for the key, destroying any who sought to force passage.
“Destroying?”
“I did tell you not to touch it,” Indigo said.
It holds the power of an inferno. Look closely. There. Burnt bone. A tooth.
Harmattan was right—looking across the clearing, Pierce could see a layer of ash and fragments of charred bone spread beneath the undergrowth.
“How do we open it?”
We do not, little brother. You do, and in the simplest way possible. Harmattan held out his hand, and there was a rustling and rattling as the shards of metal that comprised his body shifted. A moment later, a small amulet rose out of his palm. With the key.
Pierce looked down at the medallion. He’d seen similar objects before: it was an essence disk, a magical tool designed to enhance the abilities of a warforged soldier.
“Why me? Any warforged could use this.”
Not this one. This is a relic of this ancient land, a key of a most unusual nature. Only a warforged designed to interface with it can make use of it. Hydra, Indigo—it will not interface properly with their auras.
Pierce wanted to look at Lei, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so. “What makes you think I can use it?”
Because I could, if I still had a body, and you are my brother.
“Indigo also calls me her brother.”
She speaks of our larger family, of the bond between the warforged, but you and I—we were built by the same hands, for a purpose beyond mere battle. Do you remember your creation, your first awakening?
“No,” Pierce said. “I … I have always assumed that age or damage has clouded my memory.”
Even as he spoke, he remembered his vision beneath Sharn, when Lei had almost destroyed him. The room with six tables. Lei, lying on the slab next to him. The woman’s voice, whispering.
“Protect my daughter.”
Perhaps. Harmattan’s voice broke the reverie, or perhaps the knowledge was buried in your mind. Your mind is a magical engine, little