You may think you’ve read this, but actually you haven’t. Please enjoy the expanded adventures of Flame Isfree and the Feather of Fate. The full novel will be available for purchase December 15th.
Scampering through the treetops, never worrying what was happening on the ground—squirrels knew how to live. Flame ran among them, heart thudding and brisk air in her lungs, the sun shining through yellow- and red-edged leaves. All that and a deep blue sky, the wind in her face, the ground far below—it had been far too long since she’d run through a mountainside forest.
A squirrel dropped onto a branch beside her and flicked its tail. Flame accepted the implied challenge, running past it. The beast bolted past her and leaped and Flame followed as best she could, ran along a branch and leaped again when the squirrel did, but even she couldn’t leap where it did, so it gained on her with every tree.
Off in the forest, something screamed. Flame hesitated. The sound came again.
Well, she was losing anyway. Flame tossed a salute to the squirrel and slowed, listening.
The sound came again. Something in distress, that much she could guess. Flame took her bearings from the sound and trotted on.
A frantic rustling at the foot of an oak brought her down to a young fox, wrapped nose to back legs in a cord tied to a sapling. The animal saw her and opened its lips to growl at her. It couldn’t do more; its mouth was tied shut.
“Hush now, before you bring something hungry,” Flame told it softly in Vralajii because animals liked the sound of it. She sat on her heels for a better look.
The poor thing had walked into a badly-made snare. Fighting to get out of the noose, it had entangled itself with the cord and all its thrashing had only tightened it. Now it lay there, a night animal in broad daylight, panting and frantic.
The fox snarled again. Panting and frantic and also terrified.
“Oh yes, you’re vicious,” Flame told it. “I’m far too frightened to hurt you, don’t worry.” If she cut the noose, probably the rest of the cord would fall off. Flame pulled a dagger but as she reached the fox panicked, thrashing and squealing.
“None of that, now, shh.” Flame tucked the fox under her arm. “Oh, you’re all skin and bones. Better figure out hunting before winter, little one.” The fox calmed—or rather, gave up for the moment—and stopped struggling. Flame kept talking. “Out on your own for the first time and walked right into a snare? That’s some rotten luck. But now you know, right? We Vral are all right, but stay away from things that smell like wlekny. A human’s not leaving treats out of kindness.” She cut the line to the sapling, held the fox tighter as the little tree shot upright. “Shh, now, that’s only a start. I’m going to get you free and then I’m going to let you go, and I need you to run right to your den and hide, all right?” As she talked she unwound the cord, checking as she did for injuries hidden under the animal’s fur. “All good,” she said when all that was left was the noose. “Now don’t bite my fingers; I need those.”
CRACK-thunk!
Crossbow! Flame identified the sound even as she fought reflex to not drop flat on the poor fox.
“Ha!” a human voice said in Syntari. Flame couldn’t see the speaker. “Pegged him!”
“You missed him clean,” another man said. Now Flame heard the soft clomp of hoofbeats on soft earth. No leaves rustling—pine needles? She looked to a copse of evergreens she’d avoided, not wanting to get sap in her hair, and saw movement.
“Go,” she whispered to the fox, snatching the noose free. “Get underground,” she told it, with a gentle shove. The fox darted into underbrush as Flame swung back into the oak. She put the tree between herself and the evergreens and climbed higher.
“We’re riding to war, belike,” the second voice went on, “and you’re wasting bolts missing squirrels.”
Riding to war, was it? No one had mentioned anything about questing through the middle of a war when Flame took this job. Maybe it had slipped Tolor’s mind?
More likely he didn’t know. As new scout to Tolor’s unlucky little band, Flame should probably go tell him. Alas for an afternoon of running through the treetops…Flame found a place where she could look between two branches and leaned on the oak to wait.
Through the changing leaves, Flame saw two riders come out of the thicket, still arguing about whether the first idiot had exploded a squirrel with a crossbow bolt. Only two, and the one with the crossbow had a tall shiny-coated horse that didn’t come from these mountains. But in common with the other groups she’d seen on her afternoon’s run, both riders were human, soldiers for hire, perhaps, with more weapons than a casual traveler but no livery or crest to show loyalty to a lord. They were headed vaguely towards Synto, but again as with the other groups, avoiding the road.
Three groups. One was chance, two coincidence. Three was planned action. She should tell Tolor now. Flame pushed herself back from the tree trunk, but Crossbow Boy put his foot in the stirrup at the end of his crossbow and using both hands pulled the string back, cocking it. A moment later he’d placed a bolt in the weapon as well, and Flame sank back. They would never see her, an elf in the high branches, but they might see a flicker of movement, and that was all Crossbow Boy seemed to need to waste a bolt. Better to wait. Though if they kept ambling along so slowly—the tall horse tossed its head. Probably wanted to run, with legs like that. The other was a stolid work-horse type.
“Hey, hold on a moment,” Crossbow Boy said to his friend, yanking on his reins. “I’m gonna piss on that oak. Maybe I’ll catch a pixie.”
“The glitterkin are gonna curse your willy,” Other Idiot said with a laugh. But they both rode towards Flame’s tree because of course. Braying jackasses. Flame hoped some of the wloyed would act, but she didn’t think any were around.
“If one comes out, great!”
“Not with your willy waving around, they won’t!”
Catch a pixie, get a wish! Or so the story began. The tale never went so smoothly as that. Would humans never learn?
The occasional alliance of Vral and wloyed stretched down through history; Flame could help with the lesson. Though she had no intention of getting anywhere near Crossbow Boy’s willy.
Flame let the riders get close, and when they were right below her, she dropped silently to just an arm’s length above their heads.
Crossbow Boy’s horse was behind the other. He hung his weapon on his saddle and dismounted, handing his reins to his friend. Walking forward, he reached for his waist.
“Gods grant that I never see your bare ass again,” Mounted Idiot said, covering his eyes.
Flame dropped, letting gravity lend her speed as she swung both feet into the middle of the rider’s back. On the return swing, she dropped onto Crossbow Boy’s horse and snatched the reins with a whoop.
The horse bolted. Flame held on.
Shouts and curses from behind made her grin. Flame leaned low on the horse’s neck and urged it to run, to love the wind and to feel the power of its legs.
Now hoofbeats thundered behind. Flame told the horse how fast, how strong, so far ahead of its friend…the black mane lashed her face as she guided the beast lightly, only keeping it from low branches or roots dangerous to its footing.
Horses knew how to run.
CRACK!
A line of fire sliced across Flame’s thigh, telling her she’d overlooked a crossbow. She hissed and bent lower, singing reassurance as she guided the horse into a thicket.
Through the thicket and up an embankment was the road. Flame aimed the horse across the road and through the brush on the far side and whispered to it as she pulled it to a stop. Behind her a horse’s hooves rung on the road—and thundered off towards the city, and the curve where the mercenary must have guessed she’d gone. Flame patted the horse.
“Well done,” she whispered. “Now let’s see if we can’t find you a better owner.”
Staying just off the road and so nearly invisible, Flame rode until she found a track leading into the woods, and at the end a hut maybe belonging to a woodcutter. What mattered was that whoever owned the place wasn’t there, and they had a paddock and a small log-built barn. It was snug and well-maintained, so Flame put the horse in the paddock and stripped off its gear.
“Anyone with half a mind,” she told the horse as she searched the equipment, “is going to treat you better than Crossbow Boy. And if you’re really lucky, you’ll get traded into the city to some noble lady who loves to let you run and a stable lad who feeds you carrots.”
The mercenary had had only two Revlindan half-piece coins to his name? Pathetic. Flame fed one apple from his lunch to the horse, and ate the second but tossed the rest of the food. It was worse than what she’d been eating lately, and that was saying something.
On the subject of food…Flame scowled at the westering sun. Past time she was getting back to camp for supper—and out of this fellow’s paddock with stolen property.
Flame had chosen the camp, so it was a good one. It was under a rock, more or less. A giant slab of stone stuck out of a small hill like the pointed brim of a hat, and the camp huddled under it, protected on three sides and with the bulk of the boulder dispersing and disguising the smoke from a small fire. On top of the rock sat a dwarf. He blended in well, but Flame knew he was there. Okon liked rocks.
Flame dropped out of her tree and caught Okon’s eye, lifted an eyebrow. The dwarf rolled his eyes and went back to watching the forest.
Under the rock, next to the fire, Tolor knelt next to the other dwarf, Satak. More forms lay wrapped in more blankets. Twilight and asleep already…that was Tolor’s merry band.
“I have news, priest,” Flame said as she approached, but Tolor lifted his hand and she stopped. Tolor muttered on, his hand on the dwarf’s forehead. Flame saw the sleeper relax, his face soothing from an unconscious grimace of pain. Then Tolor rose and cocked his head to direct Flame farther from the camp.
So courteous, so commanding. Tolor was just the image of a priest, the sort humans loved to shower money on. Tall and neat with grey just touching his temples and beginning to mark his beard, dignified and thoughtful and so certain…or so he pretended.
“You were gone a long time,” he said softly when they were far enough from the camp that only an elf could have heard. “What have you found?”
“Trouble,” Flame answered, the classic response when one enjoyed irritating one’s superiors. She told Tolor of the soldiers she’d seen, and the talk of war.
“Hmm,” he said.
“Did you know?” Flame blurted.
“The wealth of Synto is always a great temptation to men of arms with little sense,” Tolor said, not answering the question. “My task is more important than the mutterings of men in the woods. You should have come back instead of risking being seen.”
“I can’t keep us away from them if I don’t know where they are,” Flame argued. She would have argued more, but her leg hurt and she wanted to sit down.
“How have you injured yourself?” Tolor asked, his eyes finally finding the bloody gash below her hip. She hadn’t stopped to deal with it, since that meant taking off her pants.
“It’s nothing.” It was really not a concern. It stung, but Flame was more angry about the hole in her leathers than in her skin.
“It is not much,” Tolor agreed, “but it is wide, and will scar if not treated.”
Flame tossed her hair, but she did have enough scars already. She let him take her arm.
“What happened?” he asked, guiding her to sit on a rock sticking out of the ground. The campsite had an abundance of rocks. Okon had probably made friends with all of them.
“There were two crossbows,” Flame grumbled. “I only saw the one.”
“You should stay closer to the rest of us,” Tolor said as he covered the wound with his hand. Warmth and a prickling sensation spread from it so Flame had to force her leg to stay still. “If you find trouble—if you find more trouble than you can handle—you will need support that we are not near enough to give.”
As if they’d be any help, in the shape most of them were in. Instead Flame said, “Nothing ever got scouted from the middle of a crowd, priest.”
“Again. I am Tolor Morgenn, Second Lictor of the most sacred temple of Azad at Basultra. But if that is too much, you could just call me Tolor as the others do.”
“It never pays to get too familiar with the religious. So. Lictor. Second Lictor? What do you lick?”
Tolor sighed. “That is not what ‘lictor’ means. Is that better?”
“Much. Feels great. So no licking this thingy we’re after—what are we after, again?” Okon had said that he knew, but only because he wanted Flame to ask.
“An artifact, an item sacred to Azad. It was lost at Ayidrin when the world was wrecked.”
“Great, but what is it, exactly?”
Tolor smiled. “A treasure hunter of your caliber will certainly know it when you see it.”
“I don’t think you know what it is,” Flame said.
Tolor dipped his head in courtesy and went back to tending the rest of his people, wounded in the collapse of a place where they shouldn’t have been, back when they had a less skilled scout than Flame. Ancient map in an abandoned vault? Easy pickings for one expert treasure hunter alone. But no. The scout had led them all in, and five out of the six who came out were wounded badly enough to make journeying nearly impossible. But Tolor hadn’t just put them all up in an inn for a few days while he and his god healed them up. No, he dragged them on day by day as far as they would go, prattling on about winter and pay and contracts when Flame brought the subject up. At least healing them wore him out, so he slept almost as much as the rest and Flame didn’t have to listen to him very much.
Flame figured it was just as well they’d lost their scout in the collapse, if he’d been that dumb. There had also been rats, apparently.
And now they had her. And far more important, Flame had a job. The best kind, one that kept her out of Candescent, city of light and corruption, with the promise of paying well enough that she might never have to go back.
Her leg healed and her duty done, Flame retired to a nearby maple to count her eventual riches.
Only counting her gold didn’t hold her interest as it usually would. The coins she’d taken from Crossbow Boy’s horse didn’t take much counting, of course. But her imagined eventual riches didn’t hold her attention either. Something was…not wrong, maybe, but not as it had been. It was the same itch, Flame realized now, that had sent her out into the forest earlier. Like a storm gathering. Flame jerked her head up to scan the sky, but the evening was as clear as the afternoon had been. The sun had fallen to rest on the edge of a mountain, throwing a rosy light across the land. Soon it would slip behind the mountain and bring an early night.
Painted pink by the light, Okon still stood on top of the rock. Flame grumbled and dropped to the ground.
“I heard you coming,” Okon said as Flame stepped beside him.
“I meant you to,” Flame retorted. “Otherwise you might have tossed me off your rock on instinct.”
“You smell like horse.”
“You smell like dwarf.” Flame moved upwind. “See anything?”
“Just a lot of leaves and a too-smart-for-her-own-good elf-girl. Tolor’s not one to tolerate foolishness.”
“I’m thinking the longer I don’t lead you all into a collapsing building, the more he’ll come to appreciate me.”
“Don’t speak ill of the dead, girl,” Okon said, but he snorted. To hear him tell it—three times in the four days since Flame was hired out from the caravan she’d come south with—he had known the roof wasn’t stable, but Tolor had listened to the human scout instead. It was one reason Flame questioned Tolor’s orders. Who didn’t listen to a dwarf in matters of stonework?
“Never known you to be up for work when you could be sleeping,” Okon said, blunt fingers scratching at the bandage on his axe arm.
“I’m about slept out.” The first few days had been grand—gentle journeying, as the walking wounded couldn’t go far without rest, more like a holiday trip than a quest. But there was only so much of that Flame could reasonably endure. “Ready to get on with this job.”
Okon stomped his foot. “Aye. Will be good to see an end to this fireside tale.” He looked around, leaned closer to Flame and cocked his head to peer up at her in the gathering gloom. “How much are you getting paid? Will it be enough to set you free?”
“Yes,” Flame said. She had some savings. “It will be enough.”
Okon stamped approval.
“If we ever get there. Where does this Ayidrin lie?”
“South and west of the mighty Lac Anul, the lad says. Hopefully not under the mighty lake being the part he won’t say—but I’ve seen his map. Might be so.”
Flame rolled her eyes. “Wonderful.”
“Should have let me buy out your indenture,” Okon said. “All I asked was that you go home, get ma—”
“And exchange one bondage for a worse one!” Flame snapped. “I would rather labor a hundred more years for the Tall Boots,” she added, though the thought of it made her want to scream. But she wouldn’t. She’d be free, it would be soon, and then…
“You just might, if you go on stabbing the wrong fellows and rescuing the wrong children. Was a two-year contract to start, wasn’t it?”
“Old Stone, I will push you off this rock.”
“Humph.”
Flame studied the sky where the first stars hinted their way into sight, ran her eyes over the soft shadows under the forest’s edge. Looked up, above the forest, to where the setting sun painted the mountains with a fiery glow and sharp shadows, and let the beauty calm her. Okon liked to bait her as much as she enjoyed tormenting him; letting him rile her was letting him win.
“There’s something on the wind,” she said. “Are you sure you’ve seen nothing of note?”
“Naught on the wind but a buzzard’s fart, elf-girl.”
“That miasma is you, Old Stone.”
“What kind of feel are you feeling?”
“Remember that first caravan we took together? The stone circle we found by our camp, traveling back from Redspell?”
“The one with the flat stone in the middle with stains like maybe rust or something else, and some white rocks scattered around, and the stones of the circle looked like teeth, and that fool plainsman scouting noticed the place but didn’t think it mattered to our camping one glen over? Aye.” Okon laid his hand to his axe and scanned the falling night. “I’m not likely to forget.”
No one had listened to Flame about her feeling. Of course, no one but the scout had known about the stone circle, to make a connection.
“Me nephew’s never been right since that dawn,” Okon said, following her thoughts. He looked up, scanned the darkening sky. “The moons meet soon,” he went on. “Apt night for portents, bad night to be having feelings.”
“It’s…not the same as the circle. I don’t think. I feel like that, only…less bad. More doom.”
“More doom doesn’t sound less bad, elf-girl.”
“If I could tell you more, dwarf, I would!”
“Well.” Okon stomped, scratched his beard, banged his fist on his head to straighten his helmet. “Soon as you get anything clearer, let me know. I need to start running sooner than you tall ugly types.”