Fireborn (A Born Prophecy Book 1) Read online

  Hallow bowed, his hand on his chest. “I am Hallow of Penhallow, in the region of ... Hallow.”

  Lord Israel looked at him with one eyebrow raised.

  “My parents thought it was amusing,” Hallow said, resigned to the snicker that would follow the telling of his name.

  “Indeed.” To his surprise, Lord Israel clapped him on the shoulder. “Whatever your parents’ odd proclivity toward naming their children, you are most welcome in my company at any time.”

  “It’s not the first time we’ve met,” Hallow said with Lord Israel turned to his horse.

  “It’s not?”

  Hallow was very aware of the amber eyes studying him.

  Lord Israel frowned. “I have no memory of you.”

  “That’s likely because I was a young lad at the time. You found me insensible on the road to Deacon’s Cross, and sent me to my master, Nix of Winyard.”

  “Ah, I believe I remember something of a boy in the road.” Lord Israel shook his head after a moment’s thought. “But I thought I sent the boy to be an apprentice to a magister, and no magister alive can control arcane power.”

  “Master Nix is an arcanist, not a magister. He is most learned in the ways of the Starborn, and was taught by the head arcanist of Queen Dasa many years ago,” Hallow said with pride.

  “Indeed. And where is this most learned man?” Lord Israel asked, glancing around.

  Hallow nodded toward the verge. Lord Israel climbed out of the lane to the wagon while Hallow followed, explaining their presence. “Master Nix has taken a bit too much wine, I’m afraid, but I will try to awaken him. We were on our way to Abet when he fell ... er ... indisposed.”

  “He might have been indisposed before, but this man is dead.” Lord Israel stood up from where he’d squatted next to the wagon. “Judging by the color of his face, I’d say it was due to a fondness for the grape.”

  “Dead!” Hallow knelt before his master. He checked first for a pulse on his neck, then held a hand before Nix’s mouth. There was no stirring breath. “Kiriah’s nipples! This will mean the end.”

  “The end of what?” Lord Israel made a face. “Other than him, that is.”

  “Of me. Of my career as an arcanist.” Hallow sighed, stood, and, with an effort, scooped up the heavy form of his now-deceased master, and laid him gently on the cart.

  “How did a Fireborn such as you come to bind yourself to this old degenerate?” Lord Israel asked, pulling off his cloak, and despite his harsh words, covering the old man’s corpse.

  “He wasn’t a degenerate when you sent me to him,” Hallow said, then smiled. “Actually, I suppose he was. The Harborym destroyed my village when the first of them came to Aryia. Before you drove them out, that is. I was alone—I had no one—so I ran wild for a bit, rather like a feral dog. Then some monks found me, and told me I would become a scholar, and learn how to wield the grace of Alba, but I ...” Hallow stopped, feeling like he was on the verge of saying too much.

  “But you did not wish to become a monk?” The look in Lord Israel’s eyes was mingled amusement and understanding.

  “Not so much, no. I never fit in with them, you see. I wasn’t humble, or particularly penitent, and they disliked my high spirits. So I ran away, and was on my own again. I wanted to see Aryia, to have grand adventures, but times were hard, and no one wanted a boy who had no family. That’s when you stumbled—almost literally—over me. Master Nix wasn’t any too pleased to see such a wild youth, but he taught me the rudiments of arcane magic so that I would never be hungry again.” Hallow gave a little smile at the memory, and snapped his fingers. In his hand, a little ball of pure starlight glowed. “He told me this trick would get me a meal in any tavern across the land.”

  “Most unusual,” Lord Israel said, and, when Hallow slung the rope harness across his chest, helped shove the cart back onto the dirt track. “I have known of only one other Fireborn who could handle arcane magic, and he died when I was a child.”

  “There were a few, from what I was told when Master Nix swore to teach me its secrets. He said only arcane magic could combat the Harborym’s chaos by purifying it, and he claimed he was the only one who knew how to do this, since the queen’s arcanist fell to the Harborym. That’s why we were going to Abet, so that he could offer you that information ... for a hefty price, no doubt. But now ...” Hallow gazed back at the covered form, sorrow mingling with frustration. “Now the knowledge he held is lost.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Lord Israel said, and gently buffeted Hallow’s shoulder before climbing into the saddle. “Where there is one who holds the knowledge, there is bound to be another.”

  “In Genora, possibly, but how am I to get there? How am I to find another such arcanist?”

  “Come with me. I have need of a man of learning. My magisters are being consumed by their attempts to learn the ways of chaos magic, and you could well do what they cannot.”

  “Master Nix may have believed that arcanists can purify chaos magic, but I assure you that I cannot,” Hallow objected, then—because, at this point, his future held little promise—added, “But it was always my master’s intention that we offer our services to you should you go to war. And I will abide by that.”

  “Come to Abet, as you intended, after burying Nix,” Lord Israel said, pulling a button from his tunic and pressing it into Hallow’s hand. “We will discuss it there. I am convening the Council of Four Armies, and the Master of Kelos should be there.”

  “The head of the arcanists?” Hallow thought for a moment. Although Nix had had nothing but ill to say about the man who ostensibly led the arcanists scattered across Genora, it might be that under him, Hallow could learn all that had been snatched away by death. He tweaked the cloak over Nix to cover him more fully and, after glancing to the sky, nodded. “Very well. I will meet you there.”

  “Until then.” Lord Israel rode off without a look back. Hallow, still made uneasy by the area, shouldered the rope and pulled the cart onward.

  It took Hallow three days to get to Abet. His master had been buried in a graveyard in a busy seaport a day’s ride to the north, although it cost Hallow the last of his few precious silver coins to pay for the burial and prayers to Kiriah. He was hungry, tired, and dirty when he arrived in the capital city, its shining blue-tiled rooftops glistening in the afternoon sun.

  “This is just about as auspicious as the first time I met Lord Israel,” he said to himself, brushing off the dust of the road while standing outside the council chambers, waiting to be admitted in. “Except this time, I’m conscious.”

  “What say you?” a servant at the door asked, turning from where he waited for the signal to admit Hallow.

  “I was reflecting on the past,” Hallow answered, amused. He knew well the image he presented: travel-stained, in the robes of an arcanist, and apparently with the light eyes of a Starborn. It was clear the servant answering his request to see Lord Israel would have pushed him from the keep had not Hallow shown the golden tunic button. Even now he felt any moment a group of guards might sweep down on him and throw him into the dankest of dungeon cells.

  The door behind him opened, and an upper servant, with a sour expression, gestured him in, saying in a hushed voice, “Lord Israel will see you as soon as he is done with Lord Deo.”

  “Is that Lord Israel’s adviser?” Hallow asked softly.

  “No, it is his son.” The servant rolled his eyes dramatically. “Do you know nothing?”

  “Evidently not. I’m a stranger to these parts.”

  “Stay here, next to the door, and when Lord Israel is done, he will call you forward.” The servant gave him a hard look before slipping out the door, leaving Hallow in an antechamber that opened up to a bigger, more spacious room.

  It was lit with the dying golden orange light of the fading sun, navy blue shadows creeping eastward from the massive table that dominated the main room. Upon it were stacks of books and scrolls, maps spread wide and held down by mugs and
various implements. Next to the table stood the man who had saved Hallow, his arms crossed while he watched a second man pace in front of him.

  So that was the famed Deo. Master Nix had mentioned there was a son, but had little to say other than he was the son of the Starborn queen, and his birth was said by many to have heralded the arrival of the Harborym two years later.

  The man who paced five steps before turning and repeating the action didn’t look as if his mere birth had introduced the destruction of his mother’s people, but then again, Hallow mused, what was such a man to look like? This one was as tall as Lord Israel, but broader, with a fighter’s rolling gait. He had the Starborn’s usual dark coloring, although his eyes belied his mixed blood. That he was angry was quite clear, even to Hallow, stuck in the antechamber.

  “Why do you not listen to me?” Lord Israel said, his voice rough with exasperation. “All I ask is that you, for once, heed my warnings.”

  “Warnings?” Deo snorted and paced past his father, turning before he added, “Perhaps that’s because you refuse to explain why I should heed them.”

  Lord Israel rubbed the spot between his eyebrows. “I’ve told you at least twenty times that chaos magic is too powerful for those born of Alba. Only the Harborym can control it. The arcanists have no idea how to treat it, and our magisters—”

  “Are dead, consumed by their ignorance,” Deo finished the sentence, turning to stride back past the table and his father.

  “Consumed by the very power that you try to control, and that is why I forbid your study of it.”

  “I am not a magister,” Deo said, spinning around and marching over to face his father, his face red with emotion. “They are weak. Of course the chaos magic consumed them—they have no knowledge of its ways, how it persuades one to give control over to it, but I do.”

  “And you think you can succeed where almost an entire order of magisters has failed?” Lord Israel shook his head. “Of the original forty-seven, only three remain. Deo, I know you believe yourself to be invincible, believe your mother’s people to be the chosen ones, but must I remind you yet again that it is those very people who are lifeless hulks enslaved by the Harborym? If Dasa’s arcanists could not force chaos to their will, you will not be able to do so.”

  “I will! I have! I have found a way to consume the magic, stripping it of compulsion, and leaving only the pure power. Can you imagine what we can do with that? We can rescue my mother, rescue the Starborn, and drive the Harborym back to their nightmare realm. We will have the power to free the Shades from their bondage, to restore to them that which was lost.”

  “Chaos is the power of death,” Lord Israel said, his shoulders slumping as he leaned against the table. “There is no restoring life with it any more than there is the ability to control it.”

  “You do not know!” Deo roared. “But I do, and I will show you!”

  Hallow’s eyebrows rose. Clearly, Deo had dabbled in the chaos power, but surely he wasn’t foolish enough to continue if it had proved so deadly to others learned in magic? That seemed like the sheerest folly, a sentiment that Lord Israel evidently shared, because he grabbed his son’s arms and snarled into his face, “I forbid it! You cannot succeed. It will mean your death.”

  “You have no knowledge of what I can do,” Deo said, shaking off his father. “You have not lifted so much as one finger to aid my mother and her people, but I will not sit by and be content to guard my borders. I will save those who have no savior.”

  “You will become that which you rail against,” Lord Israel argued. “Did the destruction of the magisters teach you nothing? You will become a monster just as they did. The power will consume you and turn you, and in the end, just like them, you will die writhing in agony. I would wish a better life for my son.”

  “What life would that be?” Deo asked in a taunting voice, turning away from his father to look out the window. Hallow saw his face, and was disturbed by the harsh lines etched on his face. Deo’s shoulders were slightly hunched, as if he was in pain. “To sit by and do nothing, like you?”

  “You are old enough to take a wife. Have children. Then you will see the importance of preserving our way of life for others.”

  “A wife?” Deo turned to look at his father. “You speak of Idril.”

  “I speak in general,” Lord Deo corrected. “Although there is much to admire in Lady Idril.”

  “She will not have you,” Deo said with a cockiness that for some reason annoyed Hallow. “It is me she wishes to bind herself to, not you.”

  Lord Israel took a deep breath, clearly desirous of maintaining a level of calm in the face of his emotional son. “Do not make me act, Deo. If you pursue this path, you will leave me no choice.”

  Deo returned to gazing out of the window, but the fine hairs on the back of Hallow’s neck stood on end. “And what if I already have?”

  “It cannot be. I would know if you had.” Lord Israel sounded infinitely tired, but it was Deo who held Hallow’s attention.

  Something about the younger man was wrong. Very wrong.

  Deo’s voice was curiously flat. “As I said, you do not know what I can do.”

  Hallow took a step forward at the flash of red in Deo’s eyes as he turned to face his father. “The power is within me. It is mine to control. I, alone, will master its ways, and when I have learned how to wield it, you will—ungh.”

  Deo doubled over and dropped to his knees. Hallow stopped at the entrance to the room, unsure if his assistance was needed. Lord Israel didn’t wait to determine what was wrong, though. He rushed past Hallow without seeming to even see him, and flung open the doors, shouting, “Call for the magisters! Immediately!”

  Hallow watched Deo, still on his knees, his breath a harsh panting, his fingers white with strain as he clearly underwent some sort of an internal struggle. “No,” Deo said, his voice laced with anguish. “No, I will not allow this ... urng. I ... am ... master ...”

  “Stay back,” Lord Israel told Hallow as he reentered the main room, followed by three men in the red cloaks of the Fireborn magisters.

  “If I can help—”

  “No. I have prepared for this day. I feared it would come.” Lord Israel hurried into the center of the room, gesturing toward Deo. “Quickly, surround him. The runes must be drawn before the banishment, lest the chaos consume him.”

  “Banishment?” The words came out of Deo’s mouth with the roughness of gravel. His eyes no longer resembled the amber of his father’s, and were now as red as a pigeon’s blood, while the lines alongside his mouth deepened, his lips a grim line of agony. Slowly, he got to his feet, his body racked and twitching as he struggled to gain control. “That is your solution? To banish me so that I might die without witnesses? No, stay away from me! I will not allow you to destroy me!”

  This last was spoken to the three magisters, who surrounded him, drawing runes in the air.

  “Don’t be a fool, Deo,” Lord Israel snapped. “The runes will protect you. They are the only thing that kept the last magister alive ... until the strain was too much for him.”

  “Leave me be. I will control this on my own—” Deo stiffened, and to Hallow’s horror, the same red wave of magic he’d experienced firsthand blasted out of Deo, hitting his father full in the chest.

  “Hurry,” Lord Israel gasped, doubling over. “He must ... the only way ... will be safe.”

  Hallow rushed forward and caught his savior as he fell, his eyes on the three magisters as their chanting increased, and their hands danced upon the air, heaping rune upon rune onto Deo.

  “No!” Deo bellowed, his back arched in pain as he struggled to resist the magic that was encasing him. “I will not—”

  The last word was drowned out by a cacophony of noise triggered by an explosion of air, knocking Hallow onto his arse. Even after the noise stopped echoing in his ears, it seemed to vibrate around and through him. Hallow’s eyes widened when he realized that the explosion had caused Deo to evapor
ate into nothing.

  One of the magisters fell to the ground, apparently insensible, blood dribbling from his ears. Hallow had never seen anything like the magic performed, and looked down at Lord Israel. His face was gray, but his chest rose and fell. A clatter of noise behind them heralded the arrival of several servants and guards.

  “He’s alive,” Hallow told the nearest servant, who threw himself on Lord Israel’s legs and began wailing. “But you might fetch a healer.”

  Lord Israel was carried off, as was the magister who had collapsed. Hallow wanted badly to speak to the other two, but they hurried off with hushed words and furtive looks toward him. In a remarkably short time, he found himself alone in the council room, his mind bemused by the experience of the last hour.

  After a long time considering what was best to do, he rose, and went to see if there was a bathing hut. He had a feeling he might be in Abet for a little while, and he was covered in the dirt of the road.

  It was too bad about Deo, he mused as he went in search of a servant. He would have very much liked to know just how one consumed chaos magic.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Die, you fiend!” I whirled as a blade spun near my head, nearly lopping off my left ear, but luckily only catching the edge. “Ack!”

  Instantly, my combatant dropped his axe and pulled my hand away from where I’d clasped it against my head. “Allegria! By Kiriah’s blessed toes, what have I done?”

  We both looked at my bloody hand. My ear had just been grazed by Thorsin’s axe, and although it stung, it wasn’t a pain I couldn’t bear.

  “I’ll tell you what you’ve done,” I said with deceptive smoothness before whipping the tip of my sword to his unprotected throat. “You’ve dropped your weapon.”

  He rolled his eyes, shoving away my sword before bending to retrieve his axe. “That I did, but only because you weren’t paying attention and almost lost an ear. This is no game, priest. If you wish to spar with me, then I expect you to pay attention. Lady Sandor won’t appreciate it if I send you home maimed and bleeding.”