Soul of the Fire

The log with the gear lay against the trunk of an old spruce, so it was out of the weather, to an extent, anyway. He stacked pine boughs over the tack, leaning them, up against the spruce's trunk, interlocking them, to keep the gear dry as best he could. The drizzle would soon turn to rain, he had no doubt.

Spider, free of duty, cropped grass nearby, but kept an eye and an ear to him. It had been a hard four-day ride across the Drun River and up into the mountains. Harder on him than on the horse; the horse wasn't old. Zedd, seeing that Spider was happily engaged, turned to his own business.

A small stand of a half-dozen spruce screened the view of his destination. He walked quickly along the quiet shore to skirt the trees. Once beyond them, he stepped onto a thumb of rock jutting out, almost as if it were set there as a podium.

Hands on hips, Zedd looked out over the lake.

It was a beguiling spot. Behind him, the thick forest stopped well short of the lake, as if afraid to approach too close, leaving the lone level and gentle access, but for the few brave spruce, empty of trees. The peninsula was covered here and there with brush but mostly it held thick tufts of grasses. Small blue and pink wildflowers cavorted among the grass.

Sheer rock walls rose up around the rest of the deep mountain lake. If the isolated and remote stretch of water had a name, he didn't know it. There was no practical way to reach it but this one shore.

Across and to the left, the jagged mountains, with a sloping field in their lap, rose up ever higher into the distance, providing little opportunity for much more than scraggly trees, here and there, to set down tenacious roots. To the right, dark stone cliffs obscured the view beyond, but he knew that past them were more mountains yet.

On the' other side of the lake, a waterfall cascaded over the edge of a prominent jutting wall of rock. Before him, the calm lake reflected the tranquil scene.

The icy waters tumbling into the lake came from the highlands, from the vast lake higher up in the bleak wasteland, where the warier birds alone watched. These were part of the headwaters of the Dammar River, which in turn flowed into the Drun. This cold water, coming from a place of death, would meander down into the Nareef Valley below, and give life.

Behind the waterfall were the Ovens.

In the rock wall behind that tumbling water, three thousand years before, through a gateway to the underworld, the chimes had once been entombed.

And now they were free.

There they awaited their soul.

At the very thought, Zedd could feel gooseflesh, like a thousand spiders, on his legs.

He tried again, as he had countless times, to call his gift of magic. He tried his best to convince himself that this time it would come. He spread his arms, lifting them, palms up, toward the sky, as he labored to cajole forth magic.

The placid lake saw no magic from him. The mountains waited, and were silent in his failure.

Zedd, feeling very alone, very old, let out a chesty sigh. He had imagined it a thousand different ways.

But he had never imagined this would be how he died.

This was why he couldn't let Richard know it was the chimes themselves that were loose. Richard would not have accepted what Zedd intended, what Zedd knew he must do.

Turning his mind away from the smothering melancholy, he surveyed the lake. He had to keep his mind on what he was doing, or he could easily fail and his sacrifice would be for naught. If he was going to do this, he intended to do it right. There was satisfaction to be derived in a job well done, even a job such as this one.

As he studied the scene with an experienced eye, what at first looked to be peaceful waters now revealed more. The water was alive with things unseen, moving in lurking currents, seething with dark intent.

The water was alive with the chimes of death.

Zedd looked back to the waterfall. He could make out, just beyond it, the dark maw of the cave.-He had to get there, across the water, across the water churning with chimes.

"Sentrosi!" Zedd opened his arms. "I have come to freely offer the soul you seek! My soul! What is mine, I surrender to you!"

Flames boiled out around the column of water, swallowing it in great gouts of fire that roared forth, rolling and tumbling out of the place called the Ovens. The fire turned the surface of the lake orange with reflections of its heat. For a moment, the waterfall was rendered steam. Inky black smoke billowed up with the white steam tangling together in a sinister pillar that marked the maw of death.

A clear chime rang out, reverberating through the mountains.

Sentrosi had answered.

The answer was yes.

"Reechani!" he called to the water before him. "Vasi!" he called to the air about him. "Let me pass, for I have come to surrender my soul to you all."

The water swirled and turned, as if schooling fish gathered at the shore before him. More, though, the water itself seemed alive, eager, hungry. Zedd guessed it was.