Takoda Thunderborn's Arc

Chapter 8 of 2

The three hands lifted from the stone, and the fire down the valley kept climbing. Takoda stood in the doorway of the Elder Moot Hall and watched the red line eat the lower hills. The agreement was sworn. Now the gods' king's fire was coming to burn it off the earth. Takoda did not even know who the king was. He turned to the one god who did. "Pyros." Takoda crossed to the kneeling war god. "You named the king. Tell me who he is. Tell me how to meet him." Pyros rose slow. The fire was gone from his chest now, just scars where it used to live. He looked at the smoke through the carved timbers of the hall. "You cannot meet him. He stripped the fire from me while I slept. My own brother. The gods watched and said nothing." His voice stayed flat. "That fire down there is his. It does not stop. It hunts what he points it at." "Then help me point it back," Takoda said. "You want your seat. You want him. I am the only blade here that both bloods will stand behind." Pyros was quiet a long moment. "The fire obeys the hand that made it. I made half of it, once." He held up his empty palm. "I have no flame to call it. But I know its name. A thing with a name can be told to stop. Your mother taught you that an hour ago." Takoda understood. He whistled sharp. His battlehound came bounding through the split doorway, the bloodhound-badger female, ears flat, nose already working the smoke. Outside, his mount stamped and tossed its great antlers, the bull-deer blowing steam into the cold. Takoda swung onto its back. He pulled both ancestral swords free, eagle-sun in one hand, serpent-lightning in the other. "Ride with me," Takoda told Pyros. "You speak its name. I braid the bolt. We turn it before it climbs the hall." Pyros climbed up behind him. The hound ran ahead down the slope, baying at the wall of heat. Takoda drove the mount into the smoke until the fire roared close enough to blister. Pyros leaned past his shoulder and spoke one word, low and hard, the king's name for his own weapon. The fire shuddered. It knew its maker's blood. Takoda crossed his two blades and poured both bloodlines into one braided bolt. He drove it into the heart of the flame. The fire bent. It did not die, but it turned, rolling back down the valley the way it had come, hunting the hand that sent it. The hall stood. The council held. Pyros slid down from the mount and stared at the retreating glow. "He will feel that," Pyros said. "His own fire, sent home. He will come himself now." He looked at Takoda. "Not a threat. The king. You made him real tonight."