Calling On Fire (Book 1) (28 page)

“There are the stories of Prince Noren, who led his country in the war against the Lokrush onslaught. There are the tales of Marix the Thief and the adventures of Kuun Fletcher. There are a bunch more, but I can’t remember them all off the top of my head.

“And of course, those don’t include any of the stories or parables in the Book of Bright Hyrishal. Those center around moral lessons, of course, teaching of justice, love, and sacrifice. Of course, Bright Hyrishal so loved this world that he created that he came down to earth to experience it in the flesh. In his fight against the Darkfires, he ended up sacrificing himself to save the world he loved.”

Esset finally noticed Kessa’s expression.

“What?” he asked, perplexed in return.

“Very strange. Very strange indeed,” was all she said. No matter how Esset pestered her, she wouldn’t elaborate.

The next day, Kessa woke them with breakfast as usual. They chowed down and started dressing, as usual, although Esset’s curiosity was getting the better of him—as usual.

“I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I have to admit, I’m curious where you got all this food from,” Esset confessed, waving the last bite of his toast at his plate before stuffing it in his mouth.

“There is a small town not too far away,” Kessa replied. “We deal with the people occasionally. Not often, but often enough that they do not fear us overmuch and we can trade for some items when needed.”

“Convenient,” Toman remarked. He stuffed his hat on his head. “Okay then, I’m off. See you two later.” He didn’t waste any time vanishing out the door. Kessa and Esset watched him go, then picked up their plates from the beds.

“Well, let’s drop these off at the kitchen, and then I’d like to go talk to Nassata,” Esset said, heading for the door himself.

“What about?” Kessa was curious to know.

“Well, I want to run an idea past her. I think I might be able to perform a little espionage on the Reshkin using one of my summons. I don’t use this particular one often, since it’s not useful in many situations. Now, however, I think it would be good to get some good intelligence on where the Reshkin are gathered and whether they have any new surprises planned. They were too quiet yesterday.”

Esset and Kessa actually found Nassata in the kitchen as they were dropping the dishes off—she was just finishing breakfast herself, as Toman had gotten an earlier start than most of the city. Esset managed to convince her to put together a squad so he could attempt to get some good intelligence on the Reshkin.

“Okay, let’s see if I can do this,” Esset said. He had his ear pressed up against the coiled snake that was blocking the tunnel. They had agreed that they shouldn’t open the tunnel—they didn’t want to chance a Reshkin invasion. He took a deep breath, then murmured a small incantation. The Nadra didn’t see anything happen, but a moment later Esset whispered a triumphant little “yes!” Unlike the other creatures that Esset called upon, this summon’s heat signature was so small they were only able to find it after looking for it.

“Okay, I managed to summon a bat on the other side of the wall. I’m afraid this is going to be rather boring for you—I’m going to go into a trance and do some scouting through its eyes,” Esset was already sitting down and crossing his legs beneath himself. “If anything happens, give me a shake—I’m not going to react to anything else.”

“Okay,” Nassata agreed.

Moments later, Esset was perceiving the world through a very disorienting set of senses. The summoned bat was instantly careening around the top of the tunnel. It’s tiny, thin, ashy wings fluttered madly, narrowly keeping its tiny, ashen body from colliding with the walls. Looking through its eyes were almost useless—it could dimly perceive things with its vision, but that was at its best. No, its main sense was hearing, but it was an experience like no other, and it had been a long time since Esset had scouted with a bat summon. It took Esset a good ten minutes before he got a good enough handle on the bat’s echolocation that he felt that proceeding would be useful.

The little bat fluttered down the tunnel, well out of range of any of the Reshkin on the floor or walls. That was just as well, since Esset knew from experience that any hostile contact at all would cause the bat to vanish from this plane immediately. The little bats couldn’t take any kind of hit, which was one reason why he so seldom used them. Esset directed the little creature along with almost no mental effort. Unlike the ferocious wolf or the utterly vicious panther, the little bat had no ulterior motives. As long as it didn’t have to be still, it was perfectly happy to follow his directions. If left to its own devices, it would simply flutter around aimlessly.

It was grim, getting a sense of the number of Reshkin in the tunnels. Some were loosely scattered, but most of the time they gathered in large swarms. Esset actually wasn’t sure what to look for—these weren’t soldiers, with sophisticated organization and bases. They were... Well, they were bugs, for all the coordinated behavior they’d shown during attacks. And from what he was seeing, when they were fighting, they acted like bugs.

The bat flitted about unnoticed. The tunnel suddenly opened up into a large cavern, and it took Esset a moment or two to realize what he was seeing; at first he was just confused by the texture of the floor. Normally the Nadra traveled on flat stone, polished by the constant wear of their own scales upon it, but this part of the cave was strangely bumpy. Then he realized what was causing the discrepancy—the ground was completely covered in eggs. The revelation was such that he lost control of the bat for a few moments. Thankfully it didn’t give itself away, although it did flutter down a side tunnel right away. It took Esset a few moments to steer it back to the cavern so he could investigate further.

He didn’t want to risk discovery, but this was something that he wanted more information about, so the summoner had the bat swoop down closer to the eggs to get more information. They appeared to be sticky and soft-shelled. He had no idea what color they were, but that was incidental. What bothered him was how many there were—it was a massive cavern, and the floor was completely covered, without a single square inch of the floor visible anywhere. If the Reshkin wanted to go through the cavern, they navigated along the walls instead of crossing the floor. Occasionally one of the Reshkin would go up to the eggs for a moment or two to check on them, but they looked entirely too healthy to Esset. He wondered how flammable they were.

He took him a minute or two to decide to continue his surveillance instead of seeing if he could sabotage the eggs. It was just as well, since an hour later he’d found five more identical caverns and seen far, far too many Reshkin. He’d tried to memorize a map for tactical use later, but the Nadran tunnels were far more convoluted than he could confidently organize in his head. He returned to himself with a gusty exhale and a few deep breaths to readjust to his own body.

“No good news, I’m afraid,” he reported, opening his eyes and putting his hand on the wall to help himself up. He briefly described what he’d discovered, but he couldn’t see the reactions of the Nadra due to the darkness.

“Unfortunately I don’t know anything about the life cycle of a Reshkin, so I can’t tell you how close they are to hatching, or how long it will take them to mature when they do,” Esset finished. “Do they have a larval stage, or...?”

When he heard Nassata reply, her voice sounded concerned. “I...think you saw it,” Nassata said. “Their eggs are actually relatively small, and they always hide them. In their larval stage, they excrete a sticky substance and curl in on themselves, usually in groups...”

“That does sound like what I saw,” Esset confessed.

“Too bad you couldn’t tell color—the larvae are white and light grey, and the eggs camouflage with stone. It would have been easy to tell,” another of the warriors said.

“I think his description was definitive enough,” Nassata disagreed.

“So how long does this larval stage last then?” Esset asked.

“About two days, with the old Reshkin we knew,” Nassata replied.

“Well, larger organisms tend to have longer life cycles,” Esset put in.

“Yes, but we don’t know how long they’ve been there. They could hatch today, for all we know,” Nassata pointed out.

“I know,” Esset conceded. “And we don’t know whether there are even more caverns like that. There are probably more. A lot more. Reshkin in those numbers… I couldn’t hold them back, nor Toman.”

Nassata stared at Esset.

“We’d have to abandon Salithsa,” she finally said.

“Or face extinction.” Esset rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I can’t get to all of them, but want me to see if I can send a summon to do what damage I can to the first cavern?”

“From what you’ve told me, your summons will be swarmed before they can get close enough to do damage to the larvae,” Nassata said.

“True. There probably isn’t anything I can do with one of the bats, which is probably the only summon that could get there unnoticed. I can’t summon a bird underground, and both the wolves and panthers, while being fierce fighters, probably would be too outnumbered to get far enough. I wasn’t thinking of a combatant summon, however. I can summon horses, and they are very, very fast. They love to run, so if I sent one streaking down the tunnel, it might just make it to one of the caverns, and then trampling should work well enough.” There was a pause before Nassata replied.

“That might work,” she acceded.

“Worth a try, anyways,” Esset put in. At least he could find out if the eggs were particularly flammable. He sat back down with his back pressed up against the animated snake.

One incantation later, a fiery horse appeared on the other side of the barrier and immediately leapt into motion. Esset synced his senses with it on the fly. The fiery beast didn’t pause or slow but hurtled down the tunnel, leaving sooty hoof-prints on the stone floor. Reshkin scattered at first, then tried to coordinate a defense, which the horse either dodged or leapt over or bowled straight through, depending on the tactic the enemy used.

Sometimes all it took for someone to accomplish something was the absolute belief that success was the only possible outcome, and Esset always got the impression that his summons had that. The wolves and panthers believed that they were invincible warriors, the birds that they were the fastest and best hunters and fliers, and the horses that they were faster than the wind itself and completely unstoppable. It was easy to believe along with them, as Esset did with the horse as it blazed down the tunnel; the Reshkin were no more consequential than ants around its feet.

But sometimes belief was not strong enough to defeat reality.

Esset knew the cavern was close, but when he saw what lay ahead, he suddenly knew the horse wasn’t going to make it. The Reshkin had swarmed and amassed in the tunnel ahead—there was no going around or leaping over. The horse tried to plow right through, but the Reshkin slashed at it and clung to its legs. They pulled the summon down before it could get halfway through. Esset banished the horse before they could climb all over it and force it out of existence. The summoner snapped back to himself with a sharp intake of breath.

“Sorry,” he said immediately. “It couldn’t get there. It was close, but... not close enough.” And a second attempt would only see them better prepared.

“You did what you could,” Nassata reassured him. “At least we have a better idea of what we’re up against.”

“But now they know we know,” Esset said. He kicked himself mentally—he should have left well enough alone. Half the advantage from intelligence came from your enemy not knowing you had it, and he’d blown that.

“I think it makes little difference,” Nassata said, dismissing his unspoken feeling. “Come, we’ve done enough here.”

“I guess,” Esset said with a gusty sigh, not feeling much better. He got to his feet again, using the wall to steady himself. It was all up to Toman and his stone army now. They had two days at most before the larvae hatched. Two days until the evacuation of Salithsa—or the extinction of the Nadra.