CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Fireside Chat

  “I didn’t see this one ing,” Bridget whispered.

  “Aren’t writers supposed to be good at predig plot twists,” Chris whispered back.

  “We are, but…all the evidence pointed against survivors,” Bridget replied.

  Distracted by their whispering, Bram couldn’t help but agree with the blonde archer. He was almost certain they wouldn’t find survivors iargazers’ expeditio here was one such survivor limping dowaircase toward them with the help of the sorcerer’s staff he used like a e.

  From his name and appearance—brown skin baked from too much sunlight, gray hair styled in a warrior’s dreadlocks, a face that seemed weathered by dusty winds—Bram deduced that this man hailed from Damasca, the oasis kingdom oher side of the ‘Gabi Desert’ b Lotharin in the east.

  As he recalled, his younger sister Samarah, the ninth princess, would soon be governor of this desert nd that was oharin’s most dependable trading partner. Bram hoped to rehe desert trade route, though su endeavor would have to wait until after he secured his kingdom from the u brewing in the north.

  “Kazem!” Ravi yelled, his face filling with relief.

  The Shamvan didn’t wait for the older man to reach that bottom step. He strode determinedly forward, past the bodies of his dead members, and reached the sweeping staircase where the fmetail leopards stood guard. The beasts growled at Ravi, but they stepped back to let him through so that he could reuh one of his missing Stargazers. They hugged like long-lost brothers, with the Damas kissing Ravi on each cheek.

  “Should we go closer?” Bridget asked.

  “We should,” Rowan agreed. “I too want to hear that old man’s tale.”

  Together, the five of them begarek across the garden of the dead, with Bram scrutinizing their corpses more thhly as he passed. He noticed simirities between these dead to the ones he saw scattered around the st oint. Vines crept out of their bodies like the roots of a gree, suggesting that some sort of sorcery was at work here. It was a theory that Ravi’s fellow sorcerer would firm ohe party got near enough to hear his voice.

  “…She crawled into their minds and made them think they were starving,” Kazem told Ravi, “That belief — her hunger passed onto them — that’s what killed them.”

  “And now she feeds on what remains,” Rowan guessed.

  The se of the red-haired young woman in an emerald traveler’s cloak stepping onto the bott of the staircase and causing the nearby weargs to lower their heads in obvious fear of her must have seemed bewildering to those who didn’t know her hidden truth. Kazem seemed to think so. The curiosity growing in his expression made that obvious.

  “Curious that all these deaths were not enough to sate your mother’s hunger.” Rowan’s crimson eyes drifted to Scarfang, the only wearg not to cower at her gaze. “To be fair, I was much the same when I escaped my prison…”

  She gnced mischievously in Bram’s dire.

  “Thankfully, my prince was kind enough to prepare a meal in advance.”

  “Prince?”

  Kazem’s silver-eyed gaze studied Rowan, the otherworlders—his eyes narrowing slightly as it observed Hajime—and then lingered on Bram whose hair was back to its inal pale gold.

  “Hair as bright as sunlight and eyes of molten gold…” Reition dawned on Kazem’s face, and he bowed his head like Ravi had done when they first met. “The Sn’s radiance tio shine on the Imperium.”

  “May her light never dim,” Bram responded appropriately.

  The elder Damas straightened up and then introduced himself. “I am Kazem Bashar, an elder of the of Stargazers.”

  “He’s also our Chief Diviner…” Ravi chimed in, further expining, “Kazem’s our best practitioner of the Divination Arts outside of the diviners of the Delphyne Observatory.”

  I fshed on Rowan’s face. “A prophet then?”

  “Uhe Delphynians, I ot cim to know one’s future destiny. I am merely a diviner of portents gleaned from the heavens…” Kazem’s gaze drifted down to the bodies behind Bram’s party. “And I don’t always get them right…”

  “Did you divine signs in the heavens that brought you here then?” Rowan asked.

  Kazem let out a heavy sigh. “I may have…though I’m no longer certain.”

  Bram, who’d followed the Damas’s gaze, turned ba with a furrowed brow. “This sounds like the beginning of a long tale…and here might not be the pce for it.”

  The prince’s gaze drifted past Kazem’s shoulder and over to the rge leopard man gl at him from the top step. To Bram’s surprise, it wasn’t him who first offered the olive branch. That honor beloo Scarfang.

  “I smell the blood of those ‘others’ on you,” the wearg leader growled, though not in a menag way like when they’d met in the forest. “Why did you attack them?”

  “Because they’re my eoo,” Bram answered truthfully.

  The weargs closest to him made a hat sounded almost like a scoff to the prince’s ears.

  “It’s the truth.” His gaze swept the staircase. “And the enemy of my enemy is not my enemy…but perhaps — my friend?”

  Scarfang growled. “You want to use us.”

  “I want us to be of use to each other.” Bram gnced over his shoulder at the three otherworlders; Chris who stayed alert with his shield at the ready, Bridget riting furiously into her notebook, and Hajime, who, despite the danger, was looking wide-eyed with wo everything around him. Bram wanted more allies like them to aid him in the great uaking, but only now did he realize they didn’t all have to be otherworlders. So, this time he thought to use diplomastead of the sword. “To build a long-sting partnership that will be both our tribes.”

  The growls of skepticism grew louder, though Scarfang at least seemed to be sidering what Bram said.

  “Perhaps we discuss new alliances and heavenly portents somewhere with a warm fire…and tea?” Rowan suggested.

  The trickster smiled impishly at the wearg leader.

  “Assuming you have enough trol of your curse to have a proper versation,” she teased.

  The ers of the leopard man’s mouth curled downward though it seemed even he didn’t dare to growl at the rebel trickster of legend.

  “Mother’s fed retly. Her curse won’t trigger while her hunger is sated,” Kazem answered for Scarfang.

  “She’s fed…” Bram’s brow creased. “Von Galen’s soldiers?”

  Kazem nodded. “Scouts infiltrated the ruin an hour earlier…they now address Mother’s needs.”

  “Good,” Rowan sounded delighted, “this will make the soldiers wary of returning soon, which means we do have time for tea.”

  If Scarfang’s beastly face could grimace, Bram thought he might. Instead, the wearg leader releo the trickster’s request and summohe party to join him at the top of the staircase.

  The sed floor of the Red Ruin’s main hall seemed to Bram like the typiave of a god’s temple. It was a wide spiral chamber with cloisters in the walls for each cardinal dire. Statues lihese walls, though they were left in such broken states that it was impossible to tell which goddess they veed. A raised dais domis ter like an antithesis to the hole at the heart of Rowan’s prison. On this dais was a cold hearth aged with long .

  Seeing it reminded Bram of the fun night he had shared with a gang of story-loving bandits. Strangely, though the hearth brought a smile to his face, beside him, Rowan was frowning.

  “An altar of fire…” she whispered.

  Looking suddenly annoyed, Rolucked the sage torch from Bram’s hand and threw it into the hearth. It caught fire quickly, giving birth to a r fme that drew the others to the dais like moths.

  “This was not an act of worship. I simply wanted warmth,” she insisted to no one in particur.

  “You know who this Red Ruin beloo?” Bram guessed.

  Rowan’s frown twitched. “It beloo She Who Burns.”

  Inwardly, Bram wondered if Rowan’s annoyaemmed from knowing that a deity had once called this hall hers or if there was a deeper e between the ‘Burned One’ and Aarde’s goddess of fire.

  “Yes, this used to be one of the Torchbearer’s temples…” Kazem sat on the ground beside the hearth. “It’s also quite old. The few furnishings that retain their inal forms are a and predate the Imperium by at least a thousand years.”

  He y his staff beside him.

  On closer iion, Bram noticed it was styled like a tree branch with a green crystal woven into its tip.

  “I’d wager to say Brigid’s presence hasn’t bee here for at least that long,” he added.

  Hajime, who sat cross-legged on the dais et, elbowed her lightly on the shoulder. “You didn’t tell me you were named after a god.”

  “I think he meant Brigid with a D…the, um,” Bridget checked her notes, “goddess of fire, crafts, smithing, and architecture…”

  Chris, who sat on Hajime’s other side, whispered, “I didn’t think she got that you were trying to flirt—”

  “I-I wasn’t,” Hajime cut him off quickly.

  Seds ticked by while the party basked in the warmth spreading from the hearth, a warmth they realized was banishing the eerie chill of the hall and taking with it the harsh whispers in the air.

  “I’ve got this strange feeling of déjà vu like we’re baside that circle of trees y’all said was blessed,” Chris ented.

  “Maybe the goddess hear us talking about her?” Bridget wondered aloud.

  “No…the gods never return to a pce they’ve abandoned,” spoke a voice that sounded less savage than it had been a few minutes ago.

  Scarfang had shifted bato his human form and even wore trousers like a civilized man. He was still mostly hough, his rugged bare flesh reddening more uhe hearth’s light. In Scarfang’s hands roper tea set which he the down in front of Rowan.

  “This is Mother’s home now.”

  Seeing a man evehan Bram diligently p tea for the trickster caused many brows to rise.

  “And we, her children, have bee her thralls…”

  Not fetting his manners, the wearg leader offered tea to the others.

  “As have those who remain among our expedition,” Kazem sighed.

  Ravi, who had just accepted a teacup from Scarfang, turned his head to Kazem in surprise. “There are more survivors?!”

  “Alkaid, Mizar, Alioth, Megrez, Phecda, Merak, and Dubhe…our seven you… However, ‘survivor’ might not be the best way to describe their dition,” Kazem revealed.

  On that eerie he st surviving elder of the Stargazers’ expedition began his tragic tale.

  “About a year and six months ago, I and my fellow diviners gleaned insight from the heavens…” He began. “They brought us dark tidings…a revetion of blood and quest…”

  Even Bram, who’d studied theories from all manner of sorcery, could barely uand the art of divining signs iars. For him, the idea of one steltion twinkling thtly on a night whewin moons were dim didn’t immediately mean that a god was angry. Nor did he believe that the positions of heavenly bodies—the falling of a red et—meant war was on the horizon. However, as he listeo Kazem describe his visions, Bram couldn’t help but think that the divination arts might not all be poppycock.

  “We dreamed of a crimson wolf rising from the bckest pit to bite at the heavens…” Kazem’s voice quivered as he revealed this.

  A surprised Bram gnced sideways at Rowan. The trickster caught his look and winked back at him.

  “We saw tless stars falling from the sky to alter the nd they fell on.”

  This time, Bram’s gaze drifted to the otherworlders. From the disfort on their faces, they too must have noticed what Bram observed.

  “We saw giants of bzing hair and golden eyes making war on the nd. They sundered mountains and upturned rivers with each swing of their mighty fists, while the armies they led trampled on the bodies of innumerable dead…”

  Bram noticed that all his party’s gazes had turo him. Even Ravi. He couldn’t help but look back at them with some embarrassment.

  There were many more visions, and with each disclosure of their portents, it became clear to those who shared the secret that the Stargazers’ revetions were about the great uaking and the royals’ game of succession. However, the e betweewo circumstances and the ’s expedition remained unclear until Kazem revealed, “We saw a forest burning, of a great ruin crumbling, a weeping voice calling to us, desperate for our aid…and we believed that this was how we could turide…”

  The Stargazers brought their discoveries to the city lord. However, Baroness Lena of House Leyen had beeical of the divination arts just like Bram was.

  “She might have listened if only her ears weren’t poisoned by others who coveted what was ours,” Kazem sighed heavily. “We couldn’t wait for her to ge her mind…time was of the essence.”

  Believing in the righteousness of their cause, members of their set out on an expedition to the Red Forest where they thought they might find the ao stopping the ing era of violence. During their search, they met a tribe of weargs that called the uncharted western half of the woodnd realm home.

  While p more tea for Rowan, Scarfang added, “We warned you not to delve too deeply into the forest.”

  “And we should have listened,” Kazem admitted.

  “But you didn’t,” Rowan guessed as she accepted her tea.

  “No, we couldn’t…” Kazem’s weathered hands balled into fists. “For even then, we were already enthralled by her…”

  Ravi pced a hand on the Damas’s shoulder. “Tell us…”

  “We heard her in our waking and saw her in our sleeping.” Eyes alight with misery swept through the hall. “She brought us here, and our presen this cursed pce — the magi our veins — this she used to wake from her long slumber.”

  “She tricked you,” Hajime guessed.

  “And then used you like batteries,” Chris weighed in.

  “She sounds…” Bridget stopped writing. “…Horrible…”

  No one disagreed.

  Scarfang took up the baton of the tale. “We should have stopped you from ing here like our aors kept outsiders away, but we didn’t know what would happen. How could we…when we children of the forest have walked these halls for many years without troubles.”

  “A wearg’s curse is not born from sorcery but has its roots in divinity,” Rowan expined. “You would have been of no use to this spirit, which is why your aors were sent to guard this pot to protect this ‘Mother’ but to keep her bound.”

  A smile that seemed so sinister uhe harsh light of the fire fshed on Rowan’s face.

  “You deserved to be cursed by her for failing in your charge.”

  Scarfang didn’t argue.

  “But to turn her jailors’ desdants into her attack dogs…I wish I’d thought of that,” Rowan ughed.

  It was both a girlish sort of giggle and malicious ughter that made the hairs on the back of everyone’s arms stand on end.

  “And you…” her cold gaze snapped on Kazem. “What else did you do?”

  The Damas fli the sight of those crimson irises.

  “This mother may have woken, but weakened from long captivity as she was, she should have little power remaining to herself. A year would not have been enough tthen her hold on this vast woodnd realm or enthrall weargs in service to anod…not without a host,” Rooke with the breath of experience.

  Kazem paled.

  To Bram, it was clear from the shame on the Damas’s face that Rowan had read him like an open book. Indeed, he too had been curious about another mystery. Throughout Kazem’s mentable tale, not once did he mention his master. And now, Bram had an inkling of what might have happeo her.

  “It is as you’ve guessed…” Kazem’s fists unched. “…The spirit had awoken but could do little…and even though she tricked us, we did not think her evil.”

  “Why not?” Hajime asked.

  “Because she told us her story, of how she’d beerayed by love, vioted because of love, and then imprisoned for her love,” Kazem said, sighing afterward.

  Bram and Ravi g each other. Reition fshed on both their faces.

  “And…because she showed us a way to stop our visions from ing to pass…” Kazem’s hands ched once more. “To join with her and wield her power over the forest so we might save Lotharin from what was to e… Such a feat would make our the greatest in all the nd.”

  “Your master agreed to be the spirit’s host, and with the body of a powerful sorcerer under her trol, she’s bee an unruly thing…” Bram, who’d been listening quietly, couldn’t help speaking out now with ridicule in his voice. “The weargs were broken with huhey ot trol, but you were bewitched because of your desires.”

  Kazem lowered his head in shame. Even Ravi, who’d remained behind to look after their home, couldn’t help but look embarrassed.

  “What of the young ones?” Ravi asked. “art have they been forced to py?”

  “They serve Mother like we serve her, but in a very different way.” Scarfang looked suddenly unfortable. “She hungers for many things…and they fulfill her needs.”

  “Holy shit,” Bridget whispered.

  “Eh?” Hajime gnced sideways at her. “What’s wrong?”

  Bridget leaned in to whisper something into Hajime’s ear, causing his face to flush crimson.

  In his time of feigned debauchery, Bram was a frequent guest of the dies of the ‘Pillow Court’ in the capital. So, he wasn’t ignorant of what Bridget must have told Hajime, because he also assumed this was what Scarfa. If true, then ‘Mother’ seemed far too curious for a spirit. First was huhen greed, and perhaps aoo. If she was driven by lust as well, then Bram assumed she would indulge in all seven ‘Great Evils’ uhey stopped her.

  A hand csped around his.

  Bram gnced sideways at Rowan who had lost the ahat had marred her face throughout this fireside chat. She was smiling impishly at him now, and he suddenly recalled that she could sense his emotions. Under her pyful gaze, the prince’s cheeks fred the color of apples.

  “Ahem,” Bram cleared his throat, desperate to ge topics, “our path forward is clear.”

  “Indeed,” Still smiling, Rout doweacup, “I would meet with this indulgent spirit who thinks herself a trickster.”

  Kazem looked at them with surprise. “Y-You want to meet Mother?”

  Chris spoke for everyone when he said, “That was our quest, ain’t it?”

  One by one, each member of the party nodded—even Ravi.

  “Then…” Kazem bowed so low his head hit the dais floor. “Please…save the young ones. Our master too, if you . Please…”

  They all heard it then, the chime of resolution encroag in their ears.

  ALERT! The Quest [Save the Master, Save the World] has been updated.

  GD_Cruz