Summer's deathbed

In a world of light and darkness, where magic fills the air and sea, Jurian risks his life when he ventures too close to the fire.

Firelight made his eyes ache, even through his eyelids. It flickered and danced, casting lurid shapes across his vision, and Jurian curled himself tighter and tried to ignore the feeling of his skin gradually drying out as the warmth and light sapped his strength. The eternal dusk overhead was gradually lightening as the Pyrds carried him further from the cliff-carved ring city of Dular – soon, they would need no flame to keep him contained.

From beyond the fire’s golden glow, he could hear the twitter of their voices, although the words were as intelligible as the desert breeze that blew in from the sunwards wastes. The wind that carried from the starry seas at least had some sense in their quiet susurrations, laden with salts and the tang of prey, but the sunwards winds carried only the distant promise of death and searing light. He had never learned their tongue, and suspected it would give him no comfort if he had.

The only sign of night encroaching was the lull in the Pyrds’ conversation. The flames wavered and dulled, banked into a glow that drew burning fingers across his skin.

“Jurian…”

His eyes cracked open. The sky, streaked with lavender and orange, greeted his bleary gaze with violent intent, and with difficulty he managed to turn his head so that the glowing line of the horizon seared his eyes instead. A shadow hovered amongst the flames. Jurian blinked painfully at it, but it remained stubbornly void of any distinguishing features backlit as it was by the fire. That didn’t matter much, though. He recognised the voice.

He tried to tell her to run, but only managed a dry croak.

The shadow of Ryrran grew larger as she approached, stepping through the flames untouched, and he suspected that even if he could articulated anything more complicated than ‘grrguh’ she wouldn’t listen anyway. Nevertheless, he couldn’t stand the thought of her putting herself in such danger just to try and save him. He tried to lift his arms and gesture her to move away – go home, somewhere safe – and the sunmetal chains on his wrists clinked with the movement. His brain felt just as sluggish as his baking muscles; by the time he’d gathered enough of his thoughts to make another attempt at speech the pain gnawing at his wrists had lessened, accompanied by the shriek of tortured metal, and Ryrran had scooped him up into strong arms.

Her body felt feverishly hot against him, and he struggled weakly in her grasp. She was like a bonfire pressed against him, burning away the thin floating mist that passed for conscious thoughts passing through his mind. Questions – and there were many, enough to be a flood – floated away like ash on the breeze, protestations shrivelled and died as if they’d found themselves beached on the bone cliffs that supported Dular.

His reality shrunk and coalesced into a single view, snapshot frames of impressions flickering in disjointed chaos across his perception. Everything felt filmy and distorted, stretched and pulled like a thin sheet of rubber, the supermassive blackhole of feverish pain and heat warping everything into a feverish maelstrom. Trees, branches dark against the too-bright sky. Ryrran’s pale cloth tunic pressed against his cheek. Somewhere distant, the scream of huge, beaked mouths sounding the alarm. A wash of heat and light, fire scything close by. The hoarse sound of his own breathing. Ryrran’s heartbeat, so close, so loud, so fast. The shriek of Pyrds on the hunt, closer now.

The tiny fragment of his brain that was still functioning at some level above gibbering insensibility realised he was going to die. In a detached sort of way, he didn’t think this was much of a loss. He had already resigned himself to much worse. His only regret was that – somehow, in some way he didn’t understand – he had managed to involve Ryrran in all this. She didn’t deserve to die like this.

He heard Ryrran say something, and he tried to answer. Her words slid over his brain and evaporated in the light. There was a feeling that he should reply – that there should be some kind of final communion between them, something more than what vague noises he’d managed to articulate so far. Jurian managed a strangled grunt, his head tucked into the crook of Ryrran’s arm.

Heat blossomed around him, blistering his skin and cracking his lips, and there was a dull pressure around his middle as great talons grasped him. The ground dropped away beneath him, his only support a Pyrd’s vicious talons as he was lifted up on a boiling column of air, and the darkness that had been lurking at the edges of his vision moved in to swallow him whole.

***

Following the kidnap of lord Jurian, search parties were dispatched to the outskirts of Dular. Reports indicated that Jurian was headed sunwards; reports of disturbances on the outskirts indicate the possibility of Pyrd involvement. Scouts suggested a trail headed sunwards; investigators have been sent to confirm.

***

Three days following his disappearance, Jurian has been recovered safely – although wounded – and one of his kidnappers apprehended. Pyrd involvement confirmed. Search parties responded to signs of disturbance near the edges of the Ambore – flames and calls indicated Pyrd conflict. A wounded Pyrd carrying a humanoid form was spotted, and scouts managed to intercept and subdue. The Pyrd surrendered, assuming a female humanoid form, and was taken into custody. Lord Jurian was provided medical attention, and both were returned to the apartments in Dular.

***

Limping furiously down the stairs that spiralled down towards the sea caverns that underlay the cliffside residences, Jurian ignored his aching bones and the confused and apologetic form of his chief bodyguard, Ilm, trailing along behind him. Jurian staggered around a corner, leaving a bloody handprint where he was forced to catch his balance when his unsteady feet betrayed him, and continued on to the caves.

“My lord…” Ilm attempted, but Jurian refused to slow down or indicate in any way that he had time for listening to his bodyguard. Fury and sick certainty was coiling in his gut. He hoped he was wrong about the conclusions he had drawn, but the possibility he was right made him want to vomit. Ilm, reluctant to lay a hand on his lord, bobbed along behind Jurian, caught in his lord’s furious wake.

The door to the cells slammed open, and Jurian stalked somewhat unsteadily into the dark room. His eyes flickered briefly to the guard, attempting to look alert and hide her playing cards, but Jurian’s gaze quickly focussed on the figure curled up on the floor of the cage. Ryrran’s brown hair was matted and clumped, her body making a tight comma of punctation on the grey stone ground. Jurian’s wrists, still pocked with shiny half-healed skin, ached as he spotted the thin chains of moonmetal wrapped around her neck and wrists.

“What do you think you’re doing?” He managed through gritted teeth. “Unlock her.”

“My lord, that Pyrd, it—”

Jurian gestured sharply. “I know what she did. Hand me the keys.”

The guard, caught between her lord and her commander’s wraths, glanced nervously between Ilm and Jurian with the fearful, wide-eyed look of someone contemplating their immediate termination of employment, and how literal their employer might choose to make that phrasing. Jurian’s aching muscles were relieved when she sensibly decided to err on the side of obeying him, and he whipped the keys from her hands before she could change her mind.

He pulled the silvery chains from Ryrran’s still form as quickly as he could, his heart racing as he heard her faint breathing catch and falter. Her chest was barely moving, and when Jurian checked her pulse it was weak and thready. Her skin felt like ice and was pale and bloodless – he was reminded of the feverish, flushed feeling that had prickled under his own skin when he had been captured.

Staggering under Ryrran’s weight, Jurian scowled at the solid figure of Ilm, who was standing in front of the open cell door.

“Lord, that Pyrd kidnapped you. What are you doing?”

“Get out of my way, Ilm.”

“Lo- Jurian. You-“

Jurian moved until he was standing close enough to feel Ilm’s breath against his cheek. “She saved me. Get out of my way. Now.”

He could see the various emotions fighting for control of Ilm’s features – respect was quickly drowned out by irritation and concern. Ilm shifted his weight, as if considering physically stopping him, and Jurian met his eyes with furious intensity. His bodyguard must have seen something in his eyes, or perhaps just decided that grabbing his injured charge and bodily carting him up the stairs was not a great career decision.

It felt like years, carrying Ryrran up, up, up towards his rooms and the dim light of the perpetual twilight sky of Dural. Despite the achingly slow pace, Ryrran didn’t stir in the slightest, her shallow breathing rasping quietly in the empty stairwell.

The faint light filtering though his window only served to make Ryrran appear sickly, highlighting the deep shadows under her eyes and the raw skin around her wrists. She gave a faint moan, turning her face the tiniest amount to face the thin beam of light illuminating her, and Jurian rested one hand against her forehead. She was still cold, and faint tremors wracked her body – Jurian piled all the blankets her had on her, and rushed out into the corridor to find some more. By the time he returned, her shivering had gotten worse, and she gave a wet, hacking cough. She was still icy cold to the touch – Jurian thought she might have gotten even colder, and he knew that the chill air of Dular wasn’t suited to Pyrds. Although the nearby sea often carried arctic winds up from the dark seas, without the eternal sun of the searing sunwards wastes, Dular was rarely warm. And being creatures of flame and light, Pyrds suffered for it.

***

Jurian pressed himself into the furthest corner of the room, sweat dripping down his face and soaking into his tunic. In his fireplace – empty and unused for decades – a fire roared, throwing heat and light across the room in flickering waves. The heat made his vision waver, rolling over his skin and making his scrapes, bruises and the raw burns from the sunmetal bindings ache painfully.

Within the flames, Ryrran’s form sparked with golden light, and the fire around her curled body burned white-hot, tipped with blue and green. Her hair waved as if she was underwater, haloing her head as she burned. Her chest rose and fell, her breathing strong and steady.

A green eye cracked open and focussed on Jurian.

“You look awful,” she muttered, dissolving into a small fit of coughing that sent ashes spiralling into the air to settle on the hearth. “Glad to see you’re okay.”

“It’s worth it. You’re worth it.” Jurian shifted, trying to press himself into the wall to escape the pressing heat. “You shouldn’t have come for me, you know.”

Another coughing fit wracked Ryrran’s body, and she spat glowing sparks that sizzled on the hearthstones and left smooth glassy patches where they fell. “You’re worth it, too, you know.”