The Cleansing Flame Read online

  “I’m so glad. You were very nearly gone.”

  “What . . . what did you do?” The heat from her fingers is now pulsing through my body in slow waves.

  “I wove you back together,” she says, and then her brow furrows when she sees my confusion. “You don’t have weavers where you come from?”

  “Weavers?”

  Her mouth makes a small circle of surprise. “I never thought that other tribes wouldn’t be the same as us. None of your people are blessed?”

  I shake my head mutely.

  Her hand drifts lower, tracing the scar on my belly. “Well, I am a weaver. My blessing is to put broken things back together. Mostly I heal others. That boy who was just here is my brother, Valans. He’s a raveler. That means he destroys things, picks the fabric of the world apart with his blessing.”

  “I remember the light. It hurt those monsters.”

  She nods. “Yes. He’s the only raveler left in our tribe, and one of our greatest weapons against the Shriven.”

  She moves her fingers in a slow circle, and I want to gasp with pleasure as her power ripples through me.

  “Oh!” she says, her other hand fluttering to her lips. “I’m sorry, I didn’t say my name. I am Valyra, daughter of the Red Sword, Amara. Who are you?”

  The energy flowing into me from her touch seems to be pooling below my waist. I shift, trying to adjust the folds of my breeches so that my excitement isn’t so obvious.

  “Your name?” she asks again, apparently oblivious.

  “Ah . . . I don’t know. The first thing I remember is stumbling through the wastes being chased by those things.”

  She frowns, leaning over me to place her palm on my brow. Her robes fall open slightly, and I glimpse the swell of her breast. The shapeless garment she’s wearing had hidden her curves well.

  “Does your head hurt? Mychel slipped and fell in the pools once and when he woke up he couldn’t remember anything since the morning before.”

  “My head feels fine,” I say huskily, swallowing away the desire to lift myself from the slab and kiss the hollow of her neck. Her smell is intoxicating.

  She must hear something in my voice because she quickly straightens. Her eyes find the bulge in my breeches, and her blush deepens.

  “I should have warned you. A side effect of the weaving is that it excites the body.” She tucks a strand of her red hair behind her ear, conspicuously avoiding looking anywhere except my face. “Well, so you have no name. But we need something to call you.” She taps a finger on her cheek, considering. “There’s a story from long ago about a warrior with a green glass sword. He lived during the Winnowing, when the Shriven first appeared and the world started to die. His name was Talin. Will that do for now?”

  I think of the raptor carved into the handle of my sword. “Yes, Talin is a good name.”

  “That’s it, then,” she says, stepping away from where I lie and stooping to gather up my shredded shirt, which must have been tossed aside when they brought me here. I don’t even mean to, but I get one last look at her breasts as she bends over. “Sleep now,” she says, walking briskly to the chamber’s entrance holding my shirt. “You should feel like yourself again tomorrow.” She hesitates before leaving, her slim white hand on the rock wall, and glances back at me. From her expression I can’t tell what she’s thinking, but her rosy cheeks darken again, and then she shakes her head and vanishes through the beaded curtain.

  I let out a long, slow breath as I lie back and examine the glowing ceiling once more. Sleep sounds like a good suggestion. I’m sure my dreams will be enjoyable.

  “Wake up.”

  I surface groggily, pulled awake by the edge of authority in those words. The first thing I notice is how much darker the chamber is now – the moss above me still gives off a slight radiance, but it’s far dimmer than when I fell asleep. It must be on some kind of cycle that mimics the rise and fall of the sun.

  I push myself up on my elbows, squinting at the shadowed shape standing near me. I’m about to swing my legs over the side of the slab and try to stand when the voice comes again.

  “Don’t get up. Moving too much might keep the last of the healing from taking hold.”

  I sink back onto the slab. “Who are you?”

  The figure moves closer. A spectral glow blossoms in something it holds – the brightness makes it hard to tell, but I think it’s a fist-sized gem.

  “Amara,” I say, remembering the name Valyra had said. “The Red Sword.”

  The warrior nods. Her copper eyes burn as they study me, and her mouth is set in a thin, considering line. “I am. I’m also the chieftain of this tribe, and have been so for nearly twenty years. All that time I’ve kept my people safe – from the storms, the Shriven, the great serpents.” Her copper eyes bore into me, as if she can flense whatever mask I’m wearing and lay bare my true nature. “So I have to know: are you dangerous?”

  “I don’t believe so. But . . . I don’t remember anything about who I was.”

  A humorless smile curves the edges of her lips. “You’re honest, at least.” She draws something from the folds of her robes. It catches the light from the gem in her other hand and flashes. “Here,” she says, holding it out for me to take. “Perhaps this will help your memory return.”

  The object is flat and circular, barely larger than my hand. One side is a sheet of nacreous white, but as I turn it over I suck in my breath. There’s a man staring back at me. He’s maybe thirty years old, handsome, with dark hair and high, angular cheekbones. His eyes are his most striking feature, bright as polished silver. I turn my head slightly and the face turns as well.

  So this is me.

  No cascade of memories, no sudden revelation. It may be me, but I’m a stranger to myself.

  Amara seems to sense this. “Still nothing?”

  I hand back the mirror and give a curt shake of my head.

  She sighs, squinting at me like I’m a puzzle that must be solved. “Where could you have come from? The Shriven have overrun every tribe within a hundred leagues. The last to fall were the indigo-eyed Kelashi, and that was over ten years ago. I was sure we were the last to still draw breath in this dying land. And then you wander right up to our hidden sanctuary, as if out of the entirety of the trackless wastes you knew exactly where to find us. Bearing a prism blade, no less, and fighting like you’ve been trained by a monk of the Accordance.”

  I stare at her helplessly. So much of what she has just said is gibberish.

  “Perhaps our old gods have not yet faded into the long night,” she says, and it sounds like now she is speaking to herself. She withdraws something else from the pocket of her robe. “Perhaps you are their courier, sent to deliver a last chance at salvation.”

  The object in her hand looks like an oblong chunk of dark stone veined by glimmering strands of silver.

  “What is that?”

  She arches an eyebrow. “You don’t know? You were carrying it.”

  I remember the sense of prickling cold I’d gotten when my fingers had brushed the item in the pouch at my waist.

  “I knew it was important, but nothing more.”

  “The monk says it is a key. A way to leave the wastes. He tells me that long ago, before the doom came swirling down, our world was connected to many others. The doorways are still there, waiting. And with this we can go through them.”

  “You will leave this place? When?”

  “Soon, if I get my way. I’ve called a gathering for tomorrow morning, and there I will explain what we must do if we wish to survive.” She slips the object she called a key back into the pocket of her robes. “You’ll be questioned by the others, I’m sure, and they will be suspicious. We have had no strangers come to us for many years. I was hoping you might remember something from your past if you saw your reflection, but it seems you will remain a mystery for now. The burden to convince the others will fall on me, as I suspected it would.”

  “That’s why you woke me? To s
how me what I looked like?”

  Amara chuckles softly. “It was one reason.” She takes another step closer. “Talin. It is a good name. A hero’s name.”

  She’s so near that I could reach out and touch her. The heat from her body brushes my skin, making my pulse quicken. The weaving may still be healing my flesh, but its other effects haven’t faded either.

  “I was also injured today,” she says, lightly touching my leg. “And the weaving stirs the needs of women as well as men.”

  She shrugs out of her robes, letting them puddle at her feet. The light from the jewel plays over her lean, long body, illuminating a map of faded scars. Her breasts are small and firm, and I want them in my hands. She looks like Valyra, but where the weaver was soft and innocent, Amara is hard and experienced . . . her daughter had smelled of freshness and flowers, but Amara’s scent is blood and sweat. I find both equally heady. She waits, as if giving me the opportunity to refuse what she is offering. I only nod.

  The light from the gem vanishes, plunging the chamber into twilight. Her hands grab my breeches and pull them off; cool air licks my cock, and I shudder. The shudder quickly becomes a groan as she leans over and takes me into her mouth. My fingers tangle in her hair as her tongue plays along my hardening length.

  When I’m fully erect she climbs up my body, until her mouth finds mine. She kisses me hungrily, biting down on my lip. Then she puts her hands on my chest and pushes herself into a sitting position, straddling me. She reaches back and takes my cock and slips it inside herself, moaning as she slowly slides down its length. I put my hands on her hips as she starts to move, and I try to match her motion with my own thrusts. She gasps, leaning back and arching her spine as we quickly find the same rhythm. I grip her fiercely, trying to grind her even more tightly against me. After a frantic while her movements begin to slow, becoming deeper, and I can feel the end starting to build in her. When it comes she throws herself forward, shuddering, wrapping her arms around my neck and burying her face in the curve of my throat. Her hot breath and the graze of her teeth on my skin brings me past where I can control myself, and I finish inside her as she shivers with the last of her own spasms.

  For a moment we lie like that, her face nestled in the hollow of my neck. Then she slides off of me and quickly dresses. I want to reach out and pull her back, but I don’t dare.

  “Rest well,” she says, and then she’s gone, a shadow slipping across the chamber. Her bare feet whisper upon the stone floor, the beads of the curtain stir, and I’m alone again.

  3

  The next time I wake, the light trickling down from the moss has the kind of fresh brightness I associate with the dawn. I feel incredible – the pain and exhaustion that had overwhelmed me yesterday is nothing but a distant, fading memory. I wonder how much of my recovery is due to Valyra’s healing, and how much can be attributed to Amara’s visit last night. For a moment I consider that our lovemaking had been a dream, some fantasy conjured up by the weaving as it knitted my body back together, but then I realize that I’m still completely naked. I must have fallen asleep again before retrieving my breeches.

  I’m just about to slide from the slab and go searching for my clothes when Valyra comes through the curtain carrying a steaming stone bowl nestled in a dark gray cloth. She gasps when she sees me and hurriedly averts her eyes, turning to stare at the wall.

  “Good morning,” I say brightly, finding my feet.

  “Good morning,” Valyra replies, not as warmly. Her cheeks are once more deeply flushed, and I can’t hold back a chuckle.

  “You seem to have slept well,” she says as I bend to retrieve my breeches from where Amara tossed them the night before.

  “Your weaving did wonders,” I reply as I pull on my breeches and lace them up. “It’s all right, I’m dressed now.”

  She takes a quick peek, as if she doesn’t fully believe I’m telling the truth, and then turns to me and holds out what she’s brought.

  I accept both the bowl and the cloth. Inside the bowl is a rather unappetizing gray mush, but I’m so hungry that its smell makes my stomach rumble. Restraining myself from slurping the breakfast right then and there, I lay it on the stone slab where I’d slept and instead unfold the cloth – it is my shirt, but it’s no longer in tatters. Someone has spent a great deal of time and effort stitching it back together.

  “Did you do this?” I ask as I slip it on. It has been laundered, too, and my blood and the black gore from the hooked horrors have been almost completely scrubbed away. Only a few faint stains and the neat, even stitching suggest that this could even be the same shirt.

  “I did.”

  “Must have taken you all night.” I sniff the collar – it smells like some herb has been rubbed into the fabric.

  “Most of it,” Valyra says breezily, as if it’s nothing worth mentioning.

  I wonder what she would think if she knew what I’d been doing with her mother while she was laboring to repair my shirt. The thought brings a smile to my lips.

  Valyra sees this and frowns. “Don’t you dare read anything into me doing this,” she says crossly, misinterpreting what my smile means. “I did it because you’re a guest of the tribe.”

  “Of course,” I say, returning to my bowl of gruel.

  “You have to eat quickly,” she says. “My mother has called a gathering. We should go soon.”

  In response I inhale the mush, ignoring how hot it is. I’m finished in moments, and then I scrape up the remnants with my finger and suck it clean.

  Valyra watches me in mild surprise, her eyebrows raised.

  “I can’t remember the last time I ate,” I say, handing the empty bowl back to her.

  “You can’t remember anything.”

  “This is also true.”

  She sighs and shakes her head, as if I’m being intentionally difficult, and then turns and strides out of the chamber. I follow her, pushing through the beaded curtain.

  The corridors of this place are rough-hewn from the rock, but the ground has been worn smooth, and I can feel the weight of ages. The moss covers the ceiling here as well, in places reaching with pulsing blue fingers down the walls. We pass more doorways with beaded curtains – most are drawn shut, but a few have been pulled aside, revealing the rooms within. I see a chamber filled mostly with a pool of dark, still water, another with what looks to be some sort of training course, ropes dangling over climbing walls and narrow beams of ancient wood spanning holes in the floor.

  “How long has your tribe lived here?” I ask Valyra.

  The weaver tilts her head, as if considering my question. “I don’t know, to be honest. You’d have to ask Ghervas – he’s a monk of the Accordance, and is the keeper of the old scrolls. But I think . . .” She scrunches up her face. “I think I heard him say once we’ve been here for around three hundred years. Towards the end of the Winnowing, when everyone knew the war was lost, the last remnants of the tribes built refuges against the Shriven. Places to hide. My mother once told me that when she was a little girl we were still in contact with a few of the closest tribes. But one by one they all fell to the demons.”

  “Those things I fought were the Shriven?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did they come from?”

  She shrugs. “Ghervas might know, but he guards his secrets closely. You can ask him, but don’t be surprised if he answers you with some cryptic nonsense.”

  “You don’t care to know?”

  Valyra stops for a moment and looks at me. Her lips are pursed, her expression evoking some mixture of frustration and contempt. “I don’t. Trying to understand the how or the why of what happened to our world is useless. A luxury we can’t afford. It is what it is, and we must bend our will completely towards only one thing.”

  “And what’s that?”

  She turns and begins walking again. “Survival,” she says over her shoulder.

  I hurry to catch up. “But you’re a weaver. You told me you fix broken thing
s. Don’t you want to see if this land can be healed?”

  “Part of being a healer,” she says, staring straight ahead, “is knowing when a patient is too far gone to be saved. To end the pain instead of prolonging the suffering. And then to focus all your efforts and resources on the ones who might survive.”

  “And who are they?”

  “Us,” she says fiercely, rounding on me again and grabbing my arm. “You. Me. The tribe. We’re still alive. This world is dead. But we can still be saved, if there’s a way out of the wastes.”

  “Your mother told you about the key.”

  She lets go of my arm, the passion in her face giving way to uncertainty. “Yes. It’s . . . it’s a slim chance, I know. That there’s really some doorway out there to escape this place. But I’m certain that if we stay here we will all die. When my mother was a child there were a hundred people in this tribe. Now there are seventeen. I was the last girl born – no womb has quickened in these halls for nineteen years. Right now we are all just waiting for the end to come.”

  She leads me to a grander doorway than any we’ve yet passed, one with jagged runes incised into the pillars flanking the opening and crossed stone swords carved across its broad lintel. The runes seem to squirm in my mind – for a moment they mean nothing to me, and then as if by sorcery I suddenly understand.

  “Let the strength of the Forged never falter, let the luster of Copper never fade,” I whisper as we approach, and Valyra glances at me curiously.

  “What was that?”

  “The writing,” I say, gesturing at the pillars.

  Her eyes narrow. “You can read?”

  “You can’t?”

  “Only the monk of the Accordance learns the old symbols. For everyone else it is forbidden.”

  An easy way to keep control, I think, but I don’t say this to Valyra as she turns away. Clearly, this place has secrets.

  The space beyond the doorway is vast. The chamber is shaped like a great bowl, and we have entered high up along the lip. Growing from the ceiling is a crystal infused with radiant sparks, and it reminds me of the gem Amara carried into my chamber. Tiered stone benches cut from the rock sweep down to a flat, slightly raised dais. It looks like the room could hold thousands, but only a few of the benches are occupied, down near the central platform. I make a quick count: sixteen men and women, all dressed in robes, most with shades of brown or red hair. Valyra had said the tribe was reduced to seventeen in number – this was it then, the entirety of her people. This huge sanctuary, empty save for these few. And perhaps, as Amara seemed to suspect, they are the last inhabitants of this doomed world. The thought is chilling.