03] ES) Firestorm (4 page)

I must have nodded because he looked away from me for a second and then Brand was holding me down. My mind raced with possibilities of how I was going to get both me and Ash out of the Pit. Most pressing was how in the name of the mother goddess was I going to pull Ash out of the fire he’d flung himself into. Smit lifted my hand and I drew in a slow breath. With a twist and a hard push, he forced my shoulder back into joint. There was a click and a slight crunch, then a soft pop as the ball slid back into the socket.

For a split second I thought it wasn’t so bad, but the pain was slow in coming and when it hit I was glad Brand’s hands held me down. I writhed under the pain, the wave of adrenaline, relief, and feeling of sharp knives all jabbed into me and was too much to contain. Biting down on a cry, I slowly relaxed as my body eased to the bed once more.

Brand patted me on my good shoulder. “Now we’re ready to go.”

I sat up and the world spun. I thought I saw a flicker of gray and white fur.

Smit let out a laugh. “What are you doing here, Peta? I thought the queen had you banished.”

Blinking, I stared down at my feet into the bright green eyes of Peta in her house cat form. When she wanted to, she could shift into a snow leopard. As a familiar, she was supposed to protect and watch over the powerful elemental she was assigned to. In her case, the last Salamander she’d protected died in the Deep. Which was where I’d met her.

But she saved my ass twice and I wouldn’t forget that, or show her disrespect in any way. “Hello, Peta.” I slid to the side of my bed leaving room for her to leap up. Her green eyes didn’t blink even once.

“Dirt Girl. I see you’re in trouble again.”

Brand grunted. “Cat, you’re pretty damn mouthy for one on the edge of being booted out.”

Peta let out a sneeze that could have been a snort, and wiped a paw over her face. “Please. Just because I’ve always been assigned to idiots is not my fault.”

I dropped my feet to the floor. “Good luck with your next fire assignment then. I hope they are smarter than your last.”

Brand tipped his head to the left and walked away, I followed. Or would have. A tiny set of claws dug into my lower leg. I stopped and once more looked down. “What do you want, cat?”

Those glittering green eyes narrowed as she let go of me.

“Dirt Girl, I’m going to need that luck. The mother goddess has given me my new assignment already and I don’t like it.”

I threw my one good arm into the air. “Wonderful. Good luck. I have to go, things to do.” With that I strode away. What the hell did the cat want anyway? There was nothing I could do about her assignment no matter how bad it was. Damn, unless she was spying on me for her new master. I looked over my shoulder, but didn’t see her.

Following Brand through the twists and turns of the Pit, I was surprised where he took me. The hallway opened and overlooked a cavern whose ceiling rose hundreds of feet above our heads. From where we stood, I could have jumped to the floor easily. But it wasn’t the height that caught my eye, or even the sheer size of at least thirty acres hidden within the mountain.

Around the edges of the cavern, homes snuggled into the rock walls, and out front in tiny boxed gardens plants struggled to survive. Children played and women laughed as they went about their daily routines. The sounds of music and singing floated in the air. A true village filled with Salamanders carrying on life.

Through the village, a river of lava flowed, gurgling like a brook, heat bubbles erupting here and there. Even at the distance I was, the heat felt unreal. As soon as sweat popped out on my skin, it began to dry.

A child, a little girl with pigtails and pale pink dress, ran for the edge of the lava flow and I couldn’t help but suck in a sharp breath. She would be burned to a crisp if someone didn’t stop her. I took a step and Brand grabbed me as he chuckled. I whipped my head around to stare at him. “How can you laugh?”

“Just watch, Terraling.”

I spun back to see the child dip her hands into the molten mass and hold it up . . . giggling while she did so. Two more scoops and she moved the small amount of lava to a hole she dug and poured it in. Mother goddess, she was playing in it.

I swallowed hard. It was one thing to know Salamanders dealt with the fire, but another to see a child play in an active lava flow.

“Come, meet my family.” Brand started down a set of steps cut into the mountain that led us on a switchback path to the floor. A soft meow snapped my head around as we reached the bottom. Peta stood at the top of the stairs.

Brand snorted. “We don’t need you following us, bad luck cat.”

She didn’t answer, just leapt from the stair to my shoulders where she landed easily and I fought not to crumple under her tiny weight, my bad shoulder reminding me it needed time to heal.

Peta balanced there, her tiny feet somehow impossibly heavy on my tender shoulder. “I told you I had a new assignment.” Her eyes stared into mine, glittering with her obvious distaste and the realization of what she said slammed into me.

I lifted my hands as I sputtered. “No, you’re kidding me right? I don’t need a familiar.”

But as I said it, I knew I was wrong. A familiar was the one soul I could depend on, the one soul that would have my back no matter what. But . . . “Peta, you must be mistaken, you’re meant for a Salamander. Not . . . me.”

She draped herself across my shoulders and the warmth of her body eased the ache in my injured shoulder. Her tail tickled down the front of my neck as it twitched. “I didn’t ask for this. If you have a complaint, get in line to take it up with the mother goddess.”

I turned to see Brand staring at us with wide eyes. “I’d get in line. That cat has lost more of her charges than any familiar in the Pit. Seriously, that cat is bad luck.”

Peta gave a barely felt shiver and I lifted a hand to her, putting one palm against the silken fur along her back. A simple choice lay in front of me. If Peta truly was my familiar, I didn’t want to have the kind of relationship she’d had with Loam, her previous charge. I wanted to have her on my side, a friend and confidant.

I lowered my hand. “She saved me twice already, Brand. If the mother goddess feels I am deserving of her then I am grateful.”

The twitching of her tail eased and she let out a soft breath against my neck but said nothing more. I took a step, feeling the change in my balance with her along for the ride. Three steps and I had it, walking as normally as if I’d always had a cat riding on my shoulders.

Brand arched an eyebrow and then shrugged. “It’s your life, but I’ll tell you now that my wife won’t be happy to have her in the house.”

My jaw tightened but I kept my mouth shut. I would need help to get Ash out alive and that meant for the moment I needed to keep Brand happy. As an Ender, he would have access to weapons and understood the layout of the Pit. My mind worked all the possible details, but the whole of it came to a simple piece. I had to find the armbands used for Traveling, steal them, and then break into the dungeon to get Ash. From there, we would get to the Traveling room.

A walk in the park on a sunny morning couldn’t be easier. And maybe if I told myself that enough, I’d believe it.

Brand led the way to a bridge that arched high over the lava, but even with that distance the heat was intense and my skin tightened as the moisture was quickly sucked out of me. I hurried across, passing Brand and not caring that he grinned at me. “Too much?”

A quick nod was all I gave him. Suddenly going back to the Deep for a swim in the Caribbean waters wasn’t looking too bad. If you discounted the sharks, Kracken, crocodiles, and tsunamis. On the far side of the bridge stood a large statue carved out of an opalescent white stone I didn’t recognize. The creature, a sinuous dragon, reached at least three times my height. I put a hand to it. “What is this?”

Brand stopped a few feet ahead of me. “A symbol of our world.”

“No, I meant the stone.”

“Don’t know, no one does. The statue has been there as long as Salamanders have existed in this mountain.”

He walked on.

“Guess that means this conversation is done,” I mumbled. Peta snorted.

We passed several homes and all activity slowly stopped. The women stood and stared at me, not bothering to hide the distrust, and in several cases, outright hate in their strange orange eyes.

“Be wary, Dirt Girl. You killed four men and these women know it,” Peta said.

I tried to swallow past the guilt rising in me. “Were they married?”

“One of them was,” Brand said, “He had a child on the way.”

Absolute sorrow washed through me and I stopped where I was, struggling to breathe. Those deaths had been necessary to save my family, but knowing I’d stolen a father from his unborn child? That was not who I was, I would never willingly hurt someone like that.

And yet I had done it without a thought. Without a care of who else I might affect as my spear thrust forward. “Mother goddess.” I leaned forward, putting my hands onto my thighs as the truth settled on me like a weight. I should be the one in the dungeon, awaiting my execution.

Peta butted her head against my ear, gaining my attention. “You do what you must to survive. We all do, Dirt Girl. That you feel their loss . . . that is good. When you stop feeling the pain of your actions . . .that is when you must be afraid. When you no longer care if you kill, then we have a problem.”

Slowly I straightened. “Take me to her.”

Brand shook his head. “No. She is crazed with her loss.”

Anger kissed at my heels and I used it to tap into my element. Pulling on the earth was easy here, deep in the mountain. The rock around me rumbled, and the women approaching backed away. I lifted a hand and touched one of Peta’s front paws. “Peta. Do you know where she is?”

“Brand is right. Now is not the time. Later perhaps.”

I let out a slow breath, thinking about the little I knew of familiars. My training was sparse, but I did recall my father pointing out that his two familiars were to act as guides when he needed them. A voice of reason. Which explained why he’d sent them away when Cassava was in charge.

A second breath escaped me. “All right, Peta.”

She startled on her perch. “You’re listening to me?”

I shrugged, immediately regretting the movement. With a pained grimace, I stood next to Brand. “That is part of your job, isn’t it? To advise me?”

“Yes, but . . . rarely does anyone abide by their familiars. It’s why so few of us are connected to elementals now. Even the queen discounts Jag.” Her teeth clicked shut on the last word like she’d said more than she’d planned. Jag, that must have been the panther at the queen’s side.

We were quiet as Brand led the rest of the way to his home. On the exterior, it looked like all the other homes, bare, sparsely carved, set deep into the wall, and a scraggly garden with only a few shoots of green. But when we stepped through the doorway, the room was alight with a fire burning in the large hearth directly across from us (which I hoped was for cooking and not additional warmth) and light coming from the ceiling. I stared up at the light, trying to understand how it was possible.

“Light tubes, they bounce the sunlight down to us, and it’s how we grow our fruits and vegetables, as meager as they are,” a soft, whispery voice said. I lowered my eyes from the tube to see a woman who matched the tones of her words. Her body was narrow and looked more like that of a Sylph’s with her almost frail bone structure. Most Salamanders were solid of build, not unlike my family. But she was almost petite. Of course, her bright red hair a shade that resembled a tulip marked her for her bloodline. That and her pale yellow eyes. Not gold like Ash’s, but a true yellow, like a cat’s.

She held out her hand, palm up. “My name is Smoke.”

“Put your hand over hers, palm down,” Peta whispered in my ear.

I did as told, my palm brushing against Smoke’s. “I’m Lark.”

Brand grunted. “She knows who you are.”

Smoke pulled her hand back. “Are you hungry? I imagine after your journey you might be.” Her eyes flicked to Peta, but she said nothing.

“Thank you, yes.” The whole conversation felt false, like we said things only to cover the empty space, to keep the silence from creeping in. But why?

A pounding of feet on rock spun me around and my hands went to my waist for a spear not there. Three boys ran into the eating area from deeper within the home. Each of them had Smoke’s bright red hair, but they were built like their father and they all had his eyes. They stopped as a unit, staring at me.

“Wow, she’s really pretty,” the smallest of the three boys said, and I liked him immediately. Peta snorted softly.

“Typical male.”

Brand dropped a hand on the largest of the three boys who almost matched him in size despite the fact he was obviously not fully grown, his arms and legs gangly. “These are our boys. Stryker, Cano, and Tinder. They were supposed to be out of the house for the day, but it looks as though they heard their mother say something about food.”

The smallest boy who’d said I was pretty, Tinder, looked up at his father. “We just wanted to see her. We’ve never met a Terraling. And why has she got one of our cats with her?”

Peta yawned wide enough that her tiny jaws cracked. “Because no one else could look after her.”

The boys nodded as if what Peta said made perfect sense, and then they scooted outside, their mother shouting after them. “Stryker don’t let Tinder near the flows or the Pit! No swimming today!”

Brand glanced at his wife. “Why can’t they go to the Pit?”

Her brow furrowed. “I just do not want them going. I have a bad feeling about the Pit right now.”

Brand nodded, obviously trusting his wife’s intuition. I looked at Peta but she wouldn’t meet my gaze.

“Listen to your mother. No swimming!” Brand said.

There was a chorus of groans from the three boys, and then silence. Brand let out a slow breath. “Sit down, Lark.”

I sat, though I perched on the edge of the chair. “I’m not leaving without him, Brand. You can either help me find a way to free him, or I will find it on my own.”