The Fire Eye Chosen_Sequel to The Fire Eye Refugee Read online

  Jyurik danced as he painted the palms, never missing a one, though Kay noticed a small few among the crowd hid their hands or shied away. With the cult members lined up, Kay could see more faces, but none she recognized. Still, there were too many signs. She had a feeling Jenna was in the crowd somewhere. She and the others. Drugs might help explain the long absence. They may have clouded her will or created a dependency she feared to leave. Kay had considered that the missing may have fallen into crystal dens, but if that were the case the money would have run out eventually. They would have had to supplement it by selling themselves or seeking out their friends and family. She hadn’t imagined a setup like this, well-funded by a former Dynasty with ambitions of ruling Celest again. How could she have?

  It was a long time before Jyurik completed his circuit. When he did he came and stopped just before Kay, then looked back at the thrones and bowed deeply, balancing the wooden bowl throughout. He was waiting on their orders to proceed.

  “The Kallaha Test.” Daemon was staring at her. “Those who wish to be raised to Atoned,” he gestured to the soldiers in body stockings, “must experience it. Some learn more of themselves. Some do not. Many are too afraid to face it, and that tells us something of them already. Tell me, little mouse,” said Daemon, “what do you fear?”

  “Dying while wearing this dress,” Kay replied.

  “Death. Embarrassment. Shame. You jest, but it is a beginning.”

  “Sounds more like an ending to me.” Kay’s heart wasn’t in the banter. She was staring at Jyurik, waiting on whatever he did next.

  “Step inside the circle, little mouse,” Daemon said. “Let us, but most of all you, learn your fears. Proceed, Jyurik.”

  The jester was moving, swift as smoke, and Kay retreated as he closed in, only this time she was caught by the masked men, Atoned as Daemon had named them. They gripped her arms as they had before, pinning her as Jyurik took his place before her, bowl in one hand, paintbrush in the other. Kay thrashed, a token effort at fighting. It appeared she would be getting a dose of the drug no matter what she did. It was only when hands seized her hair and she realized their intentions that she began truly struggling.

  Kay tried to toss her head, but pressure was applied from all directions. She growled low and ineffectively as fingers dug painfully into her eyes, forcing them open. They handled her as easily as a doll, her eyes exposed as Jyurik swiped the brush across them, first the right, then the left. A moment later she was flung to the ground.

  Cold washed across both her eyes, a not unpleasant, soothing feeling that did nothing to take the edge off her panic. Disoriented, she gave no resistance as she was shoved onto the smooth, black circle of golden symbols.

  She rubbed at her eyes, trying to clear them, and was finally able to do so, able to get a blurred vision back. She saw the last thing she wanted to see. Jyurik entered the ring across from her, pausing from his relentless motion to assume a fighting stance. It was to be a trial by combat.

  Kay reached for weapons she didn’t have, then closed her hands into fists as she faced the fool. The moment lasted an eternity. She felt her fingers slowly folding into her palms, tightening from flesh to bone. In the descending arc of the moment, Kay realized whatever drug they had given her was kicking in fast, and kicking in hard.

  Chapter 10. Hunter of Children

  Kay could taste the air going in and out of her raw throat, dry and tight from fear. She felt the weight of the orange light that fell gently from the hole above her. There was no sound beyond her breathing and the breaths of the hundreds watching the show. Jyurik circled slowly and Kay matched him unconsciously, the circle smooth beneath her slippered feet.

  Looking past Jyurik, a row of cult members framed the audience. As the drug pulled her senses in and out of focus, she was left with the impression of an endless wall of blank faces, no features, just a smooth roundness regarding her fate. She thought somewhere one of the drummers was still pounding out a beat. Perhaps one only she could hear.

  Smoke was rising from the jester’s scepter, which he moved around slowly and deliberately, painting a pattern in the black threads. Kay fought a wave of disorientation as she watched it, abruptly realizing there was a second column of smoke joining the first. She blinked her eyes, sure it was a product of the drug. As she lowered them, she saw that a hole in the center of the circle fed the second line of smoke, black like ink, up towards the ceiling.

  Jyurik broke off his stalking, which Kay was certain he had been doing for hours, and began dancing with both threads of smoke as his partner, wrapping them around him, touching and guiding them in a way that made them look alive. Kay slowly released her fists and, after a moment, looked away, dizzy. The faces of the crowd tracked her movement. She heard a metallic click and the circle began spinning underneath her, causing her to stumble.

  The whole structure was moving, revolving, effortlessly gliding on some mechanism which emitted a series of rapid clicks. She could see the thrones passing across behind her, the cruel gaze of the Gyudi from above as they perched over her. As they passed by her again, Olive began speaking.

  “Kallaha is our gateway to the spirit. Some say it is a door. Others a mirror. A mirror that is a door. We cannot pass through, but if we have courage, we can see a glimmer of what lies on the other side. A glimmer of another us.”

  The spinning of the circle carried the words towards and away from Kay, twisting and bending, elongating and shortening. She was only half-listening.

  “To find our way through a darkness, we seek a path. We seek guides who dwell closer to the door, or even across its threshold. Our imperfect souls turn to the spirits, born of animal and ghost, god and demon. They dwell closer to the land, the sky, the rivers, than we can. Closer to the mirror which is a door. In the past, the arts of Kallaha strove to point us to our guide, and we wailed to them from the depths of our weak, disconnected souls. We have learned from our failures. Now the Kallaha Test is used to point us not to our guide, but to our enemies. The ones who would chase us across the threshold, drive us in fear from our homes into worlds other than what we know. Those who would drive us into the dark night. It is from these enemies, these predators, that we learn who we are. We are defined by what we fear.”

  Kay was looking for the Fire Eye, ignoring the buzzing words. The opening at the top of the dome, directly above her. The spinning smoke lines clouded and confused her vision. She was dimly aware she was in the midst of some sort of test, but nothing was being asked of her at the moment. She wanted to see the Fire Eye.

  A voice from above. The three thrones extended over her, impossibly tall. “Tell us what you fear, little mouse.”

  She moved to step outside of the circle but was cruelly seized by the arm. She turned to face a nightmare.

  A giant snake withdrew its head. A thing of thick grey smoke, its long body curled from the hole in the center of the circle. It hissed, impossibly loud, and waggled a long, dark tongue threateningly at her. It couldn’t be real, yet as she looked down at her arm where it had seized her, she saw blood falling to the spinning floor. Her blood.

  The snake rocked back and forth, its coiled body pregnant with violence, tracking her as she staggered. Its sinuous movements were hypnotic, not unlike those of the masked men who had surrounded her and taken her to this unholy place. For a second, the snake seemed to fall apart, breaking into threads of smoke, and she saw the mask of Jyurik float out from underneath. The jester was wrapped in the smoke, one with the snake. He held his scepter out, then formally tapped it on one of the symbols at the edge of the circle.

  The voice from outside started again. “Jug-Desh the Snake…it appears our little mouse fears the Snake. How appropriate.”

  The symbols on the wheel were spinning around her. The light of the Fire Eye bounced off the lines of gold. The smoke again collected around Jyurik, his mask the last to be swallowed in the dark lines, then a murky shape began stalking her, a smoke demon hungry for blood.


  Kay was on her knees, lost in a fog. The circle seemed to stretch on forever, the world far away. The blank faces were gone. Just her and the smoke, and the droning voice in the back, speaking weightless words.

  As Kay watched, the snake reformed before her. This one was different. No thing of smoke. This one was solid black with tightly fitting scales like glass. The only color a bright orange Fire Eye on one side of its long face. The beast was enormous. The tight movements it made as it tracked her spoke of a terrible speed.

  It’s not real, she thought. It can’t hurt me. The name came back to her, Jug-Desh. It can’t hurt me.

  The snake nosed closer. When she didn’t react, it opened its jaws. It suddenly snapped forward, seizing her in its horribly real and strong jaw, and twisted, breaking her left arm. As the snap of her broken bone seemed to echo across the endless chamber, Kay chased it with a scream. She fell back, cradling the arm, nausea crowding in with the panic and pain.

  “Jug-Desh the Snake. Jug-Desh the Quiet Hunter. Jug-Desh hunts the children, feasting on the helpless who have no one to protect them. Jug-Desh hunts the shadows, where the screams of his prey bounce off blackness.” The voice was coming from the other side of a mirror. “She fears for the weak. She fears for the unguarded.”

  The silent snake fell back, watching. The tight black form with the Fire Eye on its face faded, becoming again the hissing snake of smoke radiating from the hole in the center of the circle. And then Jyurik was back, dancing among the threads. The forms cycled again before Kay’s eyes. Black snake, hissing creature of smoke, mocking fool. Whatever form her enemy took, it could cause her pain. She was losing this fight, a casualty of her inability to focus through the effects of the drug. This was no time to be on her knees.

  Kay struggled to her feet, head spinning, or maybe just the circle. Her arm was badly broken, totally useless for the remainder of this struggle. The voice from the mirror was now inside her. It continued in the background. Now it was bringing up lines from her past. It said fires that left good Farrow dead and you work for us now, fetch. It said he got sick on the road home, Kay. By the time we reached the border he was dead. There was nothing anyone could do. I’m sorry, eyes on the floor.

  As the snake coiled before her, Kay clenched her right fist, readying herself for the next attack. The pain in her left arm was staggering. She could feel her body fighting to retreat from the tortured limb. Before her, the fool who was no fool cavorted and the voice droned on. It said fetch, fetch and did you think we would not find a place at the table and nobody gets to put one foot in both worlds and so much time has been lost.

  Her time had been lost. She’d been looking for her missing in the wrong place. They were here, in the Court of the Gyudi, dancing on the strings of a fresh set of madness. And the thought of them brought her back to some semblance of sanity. The Fire Eye was above, Kay could feel it, and she was far from a helpless child, broken arm or no. Head full of drugs or no. The creature before her was one of smoke. And smoke was born of fire. Kay possessed some dominion over both. A dominion she’d earned or stolen, she wasn’t sure, but certainly one she had no intention of surrendering to this capering demon.

  Kay closed her eyes and reached within herself. She tapped her spark, withdrawing a measure of power from the small reservoir inside. The confusion of shifting forms stilled, the only footsteps those of the fool. When she felt Jyurik approach, she flung her hand out, releasing her power. The smoke which wrapped the jester leapt back as though blasted by a sudden gust of wind. The fool was exposed before her. Just a man with a mask, reliant on fear to make him seem more than he was, like so many she’d encountered before.

  Kay hadn’t loved a boxer, a fighter, for more than two years without perfecting the art of throwing a punch. She’d taught Amos many things, and he’d taught her one. He’d taught her how to throw the fuck out of a punch. And as Jyurik stood before her, his momentary confusion apparent even through his mask, Kay delivered one which would have made Amos proud. With a hard, right cross, she drove her fist deep into the line where the mask ended on Jyurik’s chin. Her knuckles split open along the mask’s sharp edge. The mask cracked, pieces falling to the floor. For a moment, Jyurik remained upright. Then he toppled over backwards, crashing hard into the ground.

  His limp body fell along the edge of the spinning circle, half on and half off, creating a drag which slowed it to a stop. The clicking of the wheel halted and the room was silent. Kay went to her knees, her badly broken arm protesting as she caught herself with the other. She was faced downward and could see the inlaid gold rendering of a snake below her. Jug-Desh. To the side of it, she saw what seemed to be a ferret. On the other side was an eagle. Nightmares reserved for others. A thin thread of smoke weaved before her, covering the images.

  Kay stood and found herself facing the three thrones again. The Gyudi perched over her like ravens on a tree branch, examining her with black eyes. Smoke seemed to rise from below Kay, pooling under her. She could feel her mind stretching, at capacity from whatever dosage they’d given her. She had little time before it would shut off completely, overpowered. The smoke continued to rise.

  One of the ravens started to speak, but Kay cut it off. “You gave me a message. I have one to return.” She tried to turn, to look at the others, spaced around the chamber, watching, but her eyes saw nothing but rising smoke and the three thrones above the blackness. “But not for you. For one of the lost.”

  “The only one lost down here is you, little mouse,” a raven said in a dark, humorless tone. The smoke kept rising, until only the tips of the three thrones were visible above it.

  The floor leapt towards Kay, seeking to seize her, but she held her feet. The blackness was coming, her mind seeking retreat from the overwhelming and still growing influence of the drug. Her eyes were burning, her body broken. But she wasn’t ready to give in yet, even as the smoke shrouded her eyes in black.

  She spoke out into full dark, no idea if she was being heard, and when she voiced her message, it came out, at least to her, in the voice of a frightened child. Mina Weiss’s voice, the girl who’d lost her sister. The trembling tenor of one who’d forfeited her guide long before expected, and who now faced a dark and scary journey into her future alone, no longer sure anyone would have a fire waiting on the far horizon over the mountain pass.

  “The message is come home,” Kay said. “You haven’t finished the trees.”

  And then Kay’s own fire went out, and she fell to the floor, a curtain of darkness atop her, a shrill but distant laughter ringing in her ears.

  First Interlude. The Elevation Game

  The Fire Eye shone brightly in the sky above and the Game was on in the Palace. All the intrigue, backstabbing, favor-swapping, and poorly masked desperation for status surrounding the singular ruling family became far simpler when the Fire Eye was above. For those six nights before it winked out, there was only one goal. The Game was elevation.

  The roof of the Palace held the Summit Balcony, on what was considered the thirty-fifth story. Yostre Melor, the Dynasty Head, strictly controlled access to it. His brothers and sisters, sons and daughters may find an opportunity to set foot on it once a year, if they were in his good graces. For anyone else it would be considered treason. But that left thirty-four floors open for all the maneuvering, scheming, and outright deception Celest’s most privileged class could dream up during its all-night parties.

  While the Fire Eye was open, raining its approval down on the Dynasty, the height at which one stood was status. The only sign of status, carefully managed and grudgingly rewarded by the Dynasty and an elastic set of rules and decorum, enforced by stewards and guards on every floor, armed with lists and blades respectively. To be stalled at the head of the stairs and denied entry was social humiliation. To be forcibly sent down a level was devastation. To pass the evening anyplace other than the Palace was unthinkable. If one did, it had to be at another suitably elevated location, one of the few other towering bui
ldings with the height to rival the Palace. The Devero Tower with its Halo Balcony, or perhaps the Baymo Hotel. Elevation was the Game. And Abi considered herself a peerless player, thriving by her wits, and, to be fair, looks.

  She’d started her evening at a party on the twenty-third floor, easily accessible with an invitation. Her status as an on-again, off-again girlfriend of Hammond Melor, the bachelor brother of Yostre, easily handed her a run of the first twenty-seven or so floors as well as the wildly popular Starlight Balcony. Above that it grew more challenging. Twenty-three was low for a start, but it gave her a chance to cement some alliances, a chance to be seen ascending the stairs, and, most importantly, a chance to scout out other potential evening climbers. Some floors were easier to ascend in pairs, some as a couple. Alliances were fluid and quickly sacrificed for the sake of another set of stairs, but they were essential for a truly gifted player.

  This evening, Abi had recognized a potential stair companion in a young beauty named Quill Parkeet, who’d drawn the eye of a young Lord with House Sen and now held an invitation to a private gathering on the twenty-ninth floor. The slightest raise of an eyebrow and the women were in agreement. They floated around the party, each making what connections she could, before they linked arms to ascend the master staircase which ran up the center of the Palace, no fear of their authority being challenged before twenty-nine. Quill had probably come to twenty-three with an idea that Abi would be there for this exact purpose. As a relative newcomer on the scene, it would suit her well to arrive with another woman of beauty, one with a longer tenure who was more well-known in the Palace crowd.

  Abi was eager to make at least thirty-two. By the time she made it up there Hammond would likely be hosting a small gathering of close friends in his apartment. He rarely supported her climbs through direct invitation, instead enjoying the unexpected appearances above her station Abi seemingly created of thin air. The Game kept their relationship fresh.