The Hidden Fire (Book 2) Read Online Free Page A

each man
possesses an inner fire that can light the way.”
    Aiyan
nodded, holding up his locket.  “For we who follow the Way of the Flame, that
spirit fire is joined to another, the one we carry here.”  He opened the
locket, and when Kyric saw the ghost flame, he felt a mystery greater than any
he had felt in the rune temple.  Greater than when he had looked upon the
dreamstone.
    Aiyan’s
eyes burned with the reflection of the flame.  “This is at the heart of a
Knight of the Flaming Blade.  Candidates of the Order continue to train while
on Esaiya, as do we all, but Esaiya is not for training.  Any man who arrives
there will have had years of training from his benefactor, and must be skilled
with sword, bow, and the weird.  This is why the Unknowable Forces denied you
admittance when you tried to swim the narrows.”
    Aiyan
hadn’t mentioned that before this.  Kyric didn’t know that he had known.
    “But
there are many men with these skills who cannot be a Knight of the Flaming
Blade.  Esaiya is a quest — a journey to discover an inner sympathy with the
mystery of the flame.  When Master Sorrin split the Pyxidium, he not only released
an aspect of the Unknowable, he fixed his own spirit to this world.”
    “Are
you saying that his spirit did not pass on when he died, that it resides in the
flame?”
    “Yes, it is the ghost of his own inner
fire blended with that of the Unknowable itself.  To touch the flame, to be
atoned to it, is the test of Esaiya.”
    When
Kyric awoke he was still lying on the floor of the passageway.  He saw relief
on Rolirra’s face.
    “How
long have I been out?”
    “For
days,” she said.
    His
skin felt like it was still on fire, but he could see that she had picked the
burnt clothing off him, cleaned him up, and had fashioned a loincloth for him out
of what remained of his clothes.  He tried to sit up but she placed her hands
on his chest and gently pushed him back down.
    “Take
it slowly,” she said.  “You came close to dying.”
    His
flesh no longer burned where she touched him.  She leaned forward to adjust the
wad of cloth under his head, and he slipped his arms around her.
    She
pulled away, smiling broadly, almost laughing.  “I do not know you well enough
for that.”
    He
tried to tell her that he wasn’t trying to seduce her, that it was the way her
touch took away his pain.  His mouth opened and his lips moved, but he couldn’t
make a sound.  Well, it would have been half a lie anyway.
    He
eased himself up to one elbow.  The passage had collapsed at the corner,
burying the last salamander.  Rolirra had dragged the beheaded one from the
rubble and cut a long slit down its side.
    “The
firebird?” he asked.
    She
nodded and pointed up.
    “If
we wait longer, might it go away?”
    Her
look told him that it wouldn’t.  “I have a way past it,” she said.
    Next
to the headless salamander lay a bladder that had been fashioned into a crude
canteen.  It leaked a dark green liquid.
    “The
blood of the salamander,” she said.  “It can protect us.  There must be a way
out of the desert nearby.  Do you think that you can find it?”
    “What
kind of a way out?”
    “I
do not know.  Will you not be able to see it?”
    “Perhaps,”
he said, “once we get up there.”  He really didn’t know what she meant.
    She
smeared the sticky green blood all over herself.  She rubbed it into her hair
and between her toes, then she handed the bladder to Kyric so he could cover
her back.  He painted her shoulder blades with his fingertips, and ran his
thumb slowly down her spine.  Her flesh was so soft.
    She
made an impatient sound, so he finished quickly and started in on himself.  He
realized that he had put on some weight, that he was a little broader in the
shoulder and harder, more muscular.  When it came time for her to smear his
back, she didn’t hurry.
    Rolirra’s
sword had broken and her shield was just a lump of slag, but Kyric found the
bow