Page 18 of A Kiss of Hammer and Flame

Frowning and peering again at the feeble light source, Cahra realised – they were doors, climbing like zealous ivy to reach a ceiling she couldn’t see. How tall was this room, that ceiling?

Wait. Wherewasshe?

Staring into the darkness enveloping her, it felt immense, a senseless void of space. She backed away, stumbling, spinning when her boots hit something that skittered with a hollow thud behind her. She angled her face towards the floor…

A skull. She’d kicked a skull. And beyond it, bones, bones everywhere, littering the ground in monstrous, mountainous piles. She turned back to those unfathomable doors, and then it was there, stealing into her nostrils and stabbing her with its scent. The sickly odour of molten ore, and scorching meat, and coals so hot they glowed bright white—

Just like in her dreams. Ofburning.

She had no breath left to gasp. The pressure in her chest, the sickness in her gut; it was like her every nerve was on fire, and all were spearing for her heart.

In the darkness, twin flames ignited, bathing her vicinity in a sea of blood-red fire.

Cahra opened her mouth to scream – and her eyes flew wide open. Instinct kicked in and she clamped her mouth shut with both hands before making a sound. She was bolt upright in Terryl’s goods wagon, safely stowed, its wheels creaking to a halt.

Slumped against a wall, Cahra peered at where she knew Terryl’s coach sat latched to her wagon’s end, heart pounding with every moment. And thought:

What in Hael was THAT?!

But before she could brood on her hallucination, it hit her. The wagon had stopped. They must be at the kingdom’s gatehouse. Cahra turned an ear towards a crack in the ceiling and a newly familiar voice, now dripping with high-born affectation.Raiden?

‘My good sir, Lord Theudoric is travelling to the far reaches of the Wilds, in order to inspect his north-eastern operations. He shall return with spoils for our esteemed Steward.’ She couldn’t make out the response, but the disdain hedging Raiden’s next words was clear. ‘Sir, as you should know, and you plainly do not, my lord’s reserves fund Kolyath’s armoury. Shall we call for the Steward, so you can explain why you are delaying his express wishes?’ He was definitely sneering. ‘Then I suggest that you not waste any more time.’

Gutsy move. Also, Terryl had a fake name? And a fake story too, Cahra hoped. Because if the lord was arming the Steward in the war…

She shuddered, praying she wasn’t hiding in another tyrant’s wagon. She knew so little about Terryl, but her desperation had left her with no options but to trust him, balancing that fear against their new alliance.

Cahra pulled back and spied a hole in the wagon’s side large enough to see through. Proceeding with caution, she pressed her eye to the peephole.

Her vision was consumed by one of the round grey towers of the gatehouse and the Kolyath guards and soldiers on watch in its shadow, thoroughly unfazed by Raiden and his haughtiness. An official gripping paperwork looked more ruffled. Cahra knew the arch of the gatehouse loomed above them, and the archers’ battlements above that. She swallowed, stealing a step backwards. Being wartime, the Steward had decreed all passage to and from the kingdom required his court’s executive approval, but Terryl had been adamant his people could deliver them to safety. Would it work?

The horses jerked into a slow walk.

Cahra held her breath as she peered into the peephole again. There, standing stark against the daylight, was the dark gate of Kolyath – the kingdom’s infamous ‘gate to Hael’.

She stared at the metal, transfixed. The gate was thirty feet tall, the matte black metal of its Haellium bars thick as stonemasons’ arms, each bar edged with barbs and topped with lances. She’d never seen the gate this close-up before. Apparently, Hael’stromia had three: one entrance for Kolyath, Luminaux and Ozumbre, the kingdoms that hated each other so much they’d gone to war over the capital itself.

The wagon was moving through Kolyath’s gate now.

Cahra kept a wise distance from the peephole, but she couldn’t resist a peek beyond the kingdom’s gate. What she saw were lush, straw-coloured hills of sweeping grasses, met by winding trunks and dense green foliage where Kolyath ended and the Wilds seemed to begin, shadows gathering at its edges.

A slender trunk with serrated leaves caught her attention and she fixated on the tree, the realisation sneaking up on her. A horse chestnut, the emblem of her blacksmith’s trade. She’d always loved the complexity of it, with its short base but bright, broad branches that utterly refused to accept it was a smaller tree, making its foliage conspicuously top-heavy. Thick and strong, she supposed. Like a blacksmith.

A hard lump rose in her throat as she thought of Lumsden and the smithy. How could she have just left him and her home, and all that she was, behind?

Blinking back tears she refused to let fall, Cahra kept watch at the tiny peephole as Kolyath slipped from view and, with it, everything she’d ever known. Her heart burned with the guilt of abandoning Lumsden and fear surrounding her next steps.

No home, no way to make coin, no prospects. Seers, what am I going to do now?

Her past was in Kolyath, her future out here somewhere. Meanwhile, she was caged in the now with nothing but her thoughts and feelings for company.

The way she felt about herself, she didn’t want either of them.

The time-worn wheels of the wagon rocked as Terryl’s carriage pulled it along.Thud. A bump, then another, bigger this time. The wagon jolted, flinging Cahra to one side, her head cracking against the low wooden ceiling. She instantly sat, a dull pain spreading at the top of her skull, and threw her hands out to steady herself. A loud thwack sounded that didn’t come from the wheels rolling beneath her.

She glanced nervously towards the peephole, confusion swirling with her thoughts – as an arrow buried itself above the tiny hole.

Cahra leapt back, gaping at the razor-sharp head. Had she been looking into that peephole, she’d now be the proud owner of an arrow to the brain. Shouting was coming from behind her, where Terryl’s carriage connected to the wagon, and she strained to snatch any words but the speakers were too muffled. She knew she’d be safest with her back to Terryl if archers were firing from the walls, but a few scant panels separated her from them and it fed her panic as the wagon raced with the gait of Terryl’s horses.

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