Chapter 35 Brimstone
brIMSTONE
KINGFISHER
“IT’S CALLED brIMSTONE. It isn’t like our blood, exactly. It is what keeps a fire sprite alive, though,” Lorreth said.
Archer lay on the mossy plinth, his eyes closed. He looked like a small pile of rocks. Sweat ran over my temple and down my cheek, dripping from my chin as I stared down at him, my fury building by the second.
Of course it was brimstone.
Of course it fucking would be.
Lorreth had just come through the shadow gate when I’d heard the cries coming from the courtyard outside.
Iseabail had come through moments before him.
I’d bolted from the dining room without speaking to either of them properly.
Now, we were all in the bowels of the estate, deep underground, where the fire sprites were quartered.
There was an entire fire sprite village down here in the bedrock, much deeper than the foundations of the estate.
The sprites tended thousands of fires, ensuring the temperatures ran to unbearable degrees.
The air was so hot that it burned the eyes and drained the moisture from a person like they were a cloth being wrung dry.
We wouldn’t be able to stay down here for long.
We would die otherwise, cooked alive, and that wouldn’t serve anybody, least of all Archer.
Saeris and Carrion had saved him.
The two looked like they were drowning in their own sweat as they stood at the end of what passed as Archer’s bed.
Their hands were swollen and covered in brutal blisters, but neither of them made a peep of complaint.
They stared at Archer’s chest, waiting for the tiny rise and fall that signified he was still breathing, while Lorreth explained what I had found I could not.
“It’s an element, really. Brimstone. A kind of magic all on its own. It gives the fire sprites life.”
And it kills the rot,” Carrion said.
“Yes. It looks that way.” Lorreth’s eyes darted to me, troubled.
“The feeder up there was destroyed. It seems to have partially melted and then burned away to ash. The rot had started to spread to the vines along the wall, but we used some of the brimstone that Archer lost up there to burn the affected plants, and yes, it killed the spread there, too.”
“Okay. This is good news, then,” Saeris said. “Brimstone stops the rot. Great! So why do you two look like you’re about to start punching holes in the walls?”
She looked at me, beautiful even with strands of her dark hair plastered to her cheeks, and spoke into my mind so that only I could hear. What are we missing here? Shouldn’t we be celebrating?
We can’t use the brimstone, Osha.
Iseabail, who had been notably quiet since she’d arrived, moved to Archer’s bedside.
She wore the traditional leather gauntlets of her clan on her forearms, each embossed with the swirling lines that represented the frozen waters to the east of Balquhidder lands.
Her red hair was braided and neatly bound.
She had been a novice in the eyes of her people when she had come to Cahlish a few weeks ago.
Her loose hair and flowing skirts had denoted her as such.
She returned to us now a prioress, dressed in accordance with her family’s arcane line.
In the span of the few days she had been away, she had undergone the most intense trial she was ever likely to face in her lifetime.
She was probably exhausted and wounded, and yet she had still returned here to Cahlish to help.
“As Lorreth mentioned, the fire sprite’s brimstone is like our blood, and yet it is not,” she said.
“The brimstone keeps them alive. Like blood, it flows throughout their bodies, keeping their core temperatures high. Unlike blood, they cannot lose a significant amount of it. A few drops at most. It does not regenerate as our blood does. There is a finite amount of brimstone in Yvelia, and every last drop of it is spoken for by the sprites. When they want to procreate, the whole community agrees to donate a small part of themselves. Archer will only live because other members of his pyre have given some of their own brimstone to bring his core temperature back up again.”
“The pyre?” Carrion asked.
Iseabail nodded. “The name for an individual fire sprite community. His family.”
“So they don’t have sex?”
Under normal circumstances, I would have snarled at the smuggler for being such a shallow halfwit during such a worrying time, but for once the question wasn’t laced with innuendo.
Carrion seemed genuinely confused. He peppered Iseabail with questions about the fire sprites, meanwhile my mate chewed on her bottom lip, staring at Archer’s still form.
Though she kept her own counsel, I knew what she was thinking. I waited for her to say it.
After a long moment, she spoke into my head again. We can’t use the brimstone. To secure enough of it to eradicate the rot and kill the infected feeders, every fire sprite in Yvelia would have to die.
Yes.
So we’re still fucked.
Yes.
Gods, I need a drink.
I sighed heavily, another bead of sweat dripping from my chin. Yes.
“In Zilvaren, I always thought the city should have looked bigger from the rooftops.” Saeris took a swig from my hip flask and passed it back to me.
She stared out over the lightening forest that bounded the estate, squinting toward the horizon.
“It never did. I could see the walls of every ward from the rooftops. Could see the walls hemming us in. Bars on a window.” She scowled at the memory, making a chopping motion with the blade of her bandaged hand in the air.
Te Léna had healed her as best she could, but the burns had been deep.
It would take a little while for her palms to fully recover.
“There are no walls up here. No bars on this prison window. The world feels as though it might go on and on forever.”
It would be dawn soon. She was exhausted and maybe in a little pain, too, but when she had asked to be brought up to the roof, I hadn’t had the heart to deny the request. I’d needed to breathe in the fresh night air after the penetrating heat of Archer’s home, anyway.
The land surrounding Cahlish was crowded with trees that had known the names of my ancestors.
My mother and father had met out in those forests.
Had courted each other out there, below their snow-clad boughs.
The stories I had heard about them in their youth—two very serious people made utter fools by love.
“My father lost a toe out there.” I gestured to the small, dark patch of wood, just beyond the rise of the closest hill. “You see that shadowy spot? The one where no snow has settled?”
Saeris looked in the direction I pointed, nodding.
“A graven lives there.”
She looked to me, eyes wide. “What’s a graven?”
“Mm. A kind of . . .” I considered how to describe it. “Half satyr, half troll? With a little bit of basilisk thrown in for good measure.”
“What’s a basilisk?”
I laughed softly at the distaste in her tone. I took a swig of the whiskey I’d brought up for us and handed the flask back to her again. “A snake. Kind of. Bigger. Angrier.”
“So, part troll, part satyr, part snake.” She sniffed, brushing her face with the back of her hand; there were snowflakes on her eyelashes. “I can’t even begin to picture what that looks like, but okay. What about this graven, then?”
“It lives in a little wooden cottage out there.” I pointed at the shady, snow-free patch of the forest again.
“It makes tinctures and salves and the like. A long time ago, people used to trade with the graven for potions and spells they believed would end hexes, heal ailments, or make people fall in love with them. My father had his own magic, but he was like me. He commanded shadows and not much of anything else. When he met my mother, he was relying on charm alone to woo her, and he didn’t have much faith in his own capabilities in that department, so one day, he decided to visit the graven. ”
“For a love potion?” Saeris rolled her eyes at the ridiculousness of it.
I did the same. “For a love potion, yes. And the graven said to him, ‘I’ll make you a deal. I will give you my strongest, most effective love potion. A potion so potent that the object of your heart’s desire will be powerless against your advances.
She will be yours for all of time if she drinks this potion that I will make for you. ’ ”
“And? What was the catch? What bargain did he have to strike?”
My mate was clever. She was learning.
I smiled a little as I took the flask from her and drank again.
The whiskey warmed me all the way down to the seat of my diaphragm.
“The graven said to my father, ‘I will give you this potion, and you will live out your days with a wife and a family, and you will be blissfully happy. You will be able to create powerful wards, and you will be a role model to your people and all who follow you and support you.’ And my father was wowed by this prospect, and he said, as you so astutely guessed, ‘Wonderful. This is all I’ve ever dreamed of and more. What do you want in return for these gifts?’ And the Graven replied, “Your right foot. I want your whole right foot.”
“What?”
“Mm-hm. His foot. It wanted his foot. And my father said . . .”
I pointed at Saeris, who wrinkled her nose, confused, and said, “Why?”
“And the graven said, ‘Well, I’m sick of these cloven things. I’ve always wanted two proper Fae feet to walk around on.
I bargained with someone for their left foot a while back, and I’ve been trying to complete the set ever since.
’ And the graven showed my father a severed left foot, sitting on a flocked red pillow by the fireplace, and that was all it would say on the matter. ”
“But your father wouldn’t trade his foot for the potion,” Saeris said.